::Broken Things::

"Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity." ::Herman Melville::

AIM has apartments that they contract each year, which allows them to be kept furnished. Four girls live in my apartment, 2 in each room, with 2 bathrooms, a living room and full kitchen. We have 2 giant couches that fill up our living room, an antique armoir that creates an immovable focus piece for our bedroom, and every cabinet filled with possessions left behind from past AIMers. We have enough mismatched plates, bowls, cups and silverware to host a party, hundreds of pieces of tupperware, plenty of pots and pans, pillows, sheets, towels, hangers out our ears, and 3 vacuum cleaners even.

As we moved in, it was obvious that we didn't need a lot of stuff thanks to everything already here. It also made me wonder what additions I would be leaving in 8 months. As I gain a more mission-oriented focus in my life, I am faced with the fact that I have too much stuff. I know I will be leaving things behind. I also know that wherever I go for my mission field, I will only take a couple of suitcases with all my worldly possessions for a year and a half. The idea exhilarates me :). There's so much freedom when you have only what you need. Materialism causes us to lose focus on what is important and try to fill that need with things.

Anyway, our apartment has had a number of...issues. We have taken each one in stride; we are enormously blessed by our apartment and everything it has in it. That said, it has been kind of humorous waiting to see what will break next. One of the first mornings, my roommate couldn't turn off the shower at 6:30. The knob had come lose and prevented it from turning the water off. You could spin the knob as much as you wanted, but the water stayed on. We finally over to the apartment of a previous AIM assistant named Lily, who lives in our apartment complex and takes care of the AIMers. Lily can fix anything.

We woke her up at 6:30, and she came over and fixed our shower without complaint. Since then she has had to fix our air conditioner (which leaks periodically into our new carpet) at least 3 times, replaced my broken key (twice), and replaced spark plugs on my roommates car. Lily is our hero!

I feel so incredibly to be sitting here in the comfort of air conditioning, electricity, plumbing, hot water, and even internet access. I am grateful for Lily, who ensures that everything is working properly. I am learning not to take these things for granted, though. We are so blessed in the US, but not everyone in the world has what we have.

Things cannot define who we are. Things will not last, they are perishable. We must remember that we are not home, we are just passing through. We must hold on to what will last: Jesus Christ.

-ej