If you’ve ever moved, you know that the whole thing is not exactly the most stress-free experience.
Whether you rent or own, whether you’re moving by choice or by force, whether you’re heading to place you want to go to or despise more than anywhere else on the planet, moving is not for the faint of heart. It doesn’t matter how many times I declutter the house, I will always find another bag to drop off at the Goodwill, hours before the moving van arrives. It doesn’t matter how many items I’ve crossed off my to-do list, there will always be one more thing to do, one more item I can add to the list.
Of course, oftentimes by that point, moving has become the Worst Idea Ever Known to Humankind, so I just end up throwing my hands in the air while simultaneously crumpling the list into a tiny ball and making a three-point shot into the recycling bin on the other end of the kitchen.
My basketball skills really are off the charts when it comes to household accessories.
But there’s also something about moving that saves me, because it strips me down of the things I own, of the books and the clothes and the furniture I think I so desperately need in order to live a whole and authentic life.
It forces me to simplify, making do not with what I want but with what I really, actually need – and in twenty-first century America, mine is a life of privilege. Mine is a life filled mostly of wants, oftentimes ignorant and oblivious to actual needs.
Because somehow, after shredding all the papers and sifting through all of the drawers and organizing all of the suitcases for vacation and camping and moving, too, I’m just left with me.
And I think this barebones version is actually the most real and authentic version of me.
In this space, we talk about coloring outside the lines, about taking risks and asking questions and pushing boundaries. And when it comes to something as simple and mundane as moving, when the stuff around me is pared down to the essentials and when I am spent to the point of exhaustion, I think about this most tender version of me – for this most tender version is my deepest self.
And as luck would have it, this most tender version is the one God calls beloved.
I suppose in a way, the whole thing makes me think about the most important things, about what really matters, about the legacy I want to leave when my time on earth is done.
Of course, I can’t help but think about a sermon from one of the greatest preachers of all time. In “Drum Major Instinct,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., essentially delivered his own eulogy – his prophetic words hauntingly true when he was murdered less than two months later.
To the crowd at Ebenezer Baptist Church, he stated that he didn’t want a long funeral, nor did the preacher need to mention that he’d been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. They didn’t need to dwell on his credentials nor on his other awards, but instead, he wanted “…for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody.”
But the part that really gets me is this:
Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won’t have any money to leave behind. I won’t have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. And that’s all I want to say.
I don’t know about you, but when I think about moving, I can’t help but think about all the junk I tend to carry along with me. But when I think about the words of Dr. King, I can’t help but think about lessening my load.
I can’t help but think about paring down my accessories so I might focus on the truest, real things, like being a drum major for justice and peace and righteousness, like leaving a committed life behind.
For at the end of the day, this legacy burning inside us is all we truly have to leave behind.
Wouldn’t you agree?
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