Mwah! and You thought Jenn was crazy before? Wait till you see her now.

Thanks you guys.  Yall are the best readers a girl could want.  I appreciate the encouragement and the kick in the teeth to, uh, get over myself and just keep on writing.  I think I've always been a little afraid to hurt somebody in a sensitive spot, maybe a newbie that has just lost a baby or what have you because I was so, so, so, just raw, and sensitive for a long time about living kids and rainbow babies and all that jazz so I have censored myself out of that concern.  But it is stifling, not being able to really share my life when that is what this space is supposed to be all about - my space to really, truly put it all out there, dead baby angst or not.  So while I used Jenn's Den as a place to share the stuff the general public and my in laws couldn't handle about my grief, I was always careful to share about other things in my life only away from Jenn's Den because, again, fear of hurting some newly grieving mama.

Ah.  Enough.

Sooooo, since I have both the inclination (thanks again yall!) and the time this morning (L is at my mom's on a sleepover and Bee is still snoozing away), here I am writing about things other than grief.

I am currently wanting to give away all my stuff, sell my house and move to India where I will take care of the poor and staff an orphanage.  Ha, I jest.  Sort of.  Not really.  Depends on the day I guess.  For quite awhile I have had the feeling that all this stuff in my house is slowly suffocating me and my family.  Now we are not even in the mainstream on this - we buy far less stuff than many of our friends and family, we don't drive new cars or live in a huge house or shop at the mall or even have cable, and yet it got to the point where I could hardly close the toy closet because it was just stuffed to the brim.  Ridiculous!  Ridiculous I say! And so I started purging.  Giving away, sending to Goodwill, having a yard sale, chucking crap in the trash.  Some of this came out of grief and my desire to control what I could in my life - my environment - but it has continued since then and once I opened my eyes and saw the massive amounts of stuff we were housing and storing and spending my hubby's hard earned dollars on, well, it made me kind of sick to my stomach.  Thinking of some poor mother who struggles to provide one single solitary bowl of rice for their child a day and here I am with a pantry full of food and a complaint on my lips about there being nothing to eat.

GAH.

Also?  Also here are some guidelines for how I am supposed to be living my life, straight from the manual I profess to follow - But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?  1 John 3:17 and Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.  James 1:27 and there are many, many, more which I think I have conveniently ignored for the majority of my Christian walk.  Sure, sure, I don't curse most days and I don't get drunk and act a fool at tailgating parties and I speak kindly most of the time and try my best to be honest and pretend like I love others the way Jesus said we should, but in all reality?  In all reality I think I was exchanging responsibility and maturity for the true Christian walk.  Like, we have a modest savings account and own our home and don't spend money on lavish vacations and I pray and read my bible (while apparently not really paying any mind to what it actually says that might be even slightly inconvenient to me) and act like upstanding citizens of the community and isn't that all there is to being a Christian?

No, Jenn.  No that is not all there is.

My spirit has been groaning within me.  I needed to find some fellow-about-to-sell-their-homes-and-move-to-India folks and so I googled Christian simplicity and found stuff which led to other stuff and eventually I read this book:

And then things started to get a little crazy.  I am currently reading some more radical-ish Christian stuff and it is blowing.my.mind.  Yall.  I have so much and others have so little and did you know that around 25,000 people die each day of poverty?  Twenty Five Thousand.  Most often children.  Children of mothers who loved them and cared for them and are grieving for them just as I have loved and cared and grieved over my own children who haven't made it.

It's rocking my world.  Jacking me up.  Making me crazy and inducing a lot of eye rolling in my hubby.  Still working this all out.  Not sure where to go next but realize I cannot continue living on in the way that I have all these years.  

But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?  1 John 3:17

Yall, I have the world's goods.  I now see my brother in his need.  I can't continue to shut up my heart from him.