| One common area of discussion was the downsizing discussion; in our seventies and eighties, we are all in the process of making end-of-life decisions… |
David and I have frequently found ourselves saying, “We really need to get some friends our own age.” Mostly, our buddies are in their forties and fifties—our own adult kids, of course, and their friends, but younger generations from our church and wherever it is we find these folk who like to hang out with us. Some of this is mentoring (or I prefer the term I coined, “frientoring,” because I have found these different-age friendships extremely mutual), but a lot of it is just younger folk who have dropped into our lives via small groups and stayed in one way or another.
So when we were invited to spend the evening and have lentil kashuri, a traditional Egyptian dish with rice beneath and caramelized onions on top, we greatly enjoyed the interaction with our own age-set. These two couples have lived and traveled the world, one husband was the international director of a large, historic missions organization. Our getting-acquainted conversation was rich—and we all looked back on decades that had been spent in significant ways serving the Lord. We three wives left the table, expecting our husbands to join us, sat in the living room and listened to the sounds of the men from the dining room—two hours of engaged conversation, punctuated by much laughter. I’m telling them I’m adding them to my “finding friends our age” list.
One common area of discussion was the downsizing discussion; in our seventies and eighties, we are all in the process of making end-of-life decisions, and we’re all preparing ourselves in the near future to move from our homes, sell them or pass them along to adult children, and settle into smaller condos, retirement villages, or as in our case, move into the in-law apartment in our daughter and son-in-law’s home.
I found the book to be thin in content, though the concept is interesting; probably everything I needed to know about this Swedish tradition could have been researched on the Internet without purchasing the book (everything but “somewhere between 80 and 100”). However, it has set me on a path to designing a deliberate plan, while we are still healthy and functioning in an organized and deliberate fashion, to do my own “death cleaning” so that by next spring we will have diminished our possessions as much as possible.
Here is the start of my plan: First, I will write a letter and invite all my adult grandchildren (there are six of them) and their spouses to sign up sometime between this year and next for a purging visit. Now that they almost all married, there may be possessions of ours they’d like to have for their own small apartments (or save in storage for future homes). We do need help, but this is more a matter of creating a time of connection with each couple in order to have the conversations about family origin, to laugh and spend a few days with nothing more than sharing the work and caring about each other.
The next step is to establish a master schedule. Most of the furniture we are going to take with us to Turtle Creek Acres has been moved there. A library/study has been arranged for David in the loft area above the apartment (the Timberlake home is a converted barn house on 18 acres of mostly protected marshland). Probably the next best step is to tackle the attic and garage. Magnusson sold her home with her beloved garden to move into a more manageable apartment, and she left all her gardening tools and equipment for the delighted new owners. Great idea, but everything needs badly to be purged and ordered.
However, as I was reading The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, I realized there was a whole area of downsizing and clearing out the author never considered—the gentle art of seriously cleaning out the interior life. David and I are beginning these discussions with the question: Do we have any regrets? He appears at first look to not have any, while I think I have a few.
This March 22 and 24, Hungry Souls is offering two 8-hour retreats, particularly designed as opportunities for another type of purging, Spring Cleaning for the Soul. The details and the registration form are in the NOTICES section. The time is from 9:00 to 5:00.
In a planning session recently, one of my co-workers nixed putting anything the weekend before Easter. “That,” she said, “is the worst time to plan an event.” That gave me pause, because Spring Cleaning for the Soul is planned for the weekend before an early Easter. Then, that inner nudge, No. This is exactly the right time to ready a soul for Easter—a döstäning of a spiritual kind. For those of you who know you need to do soul-work—purging resentments, listening to and obeying the voice that says you need to forgive yourself and others, confessing old errors and facing regrets, then asking for God to set you free from the accumulation of old junk—and keep putting off getting started, This Is Exactly the Day You Need to Set Apart on Your Calendar.
David and I have five decades of marriage and ministry behind us; we specialize in soul care, and Doug and Melissa Timberlake are both highly trained life coaches working with executive teams as well as with individuals. We are looking forward to touching your life and being touched by yours.