My grandparents are in crisis.

After 10 years of begging and pleading them to move out of their home into a retirement community, it’s finally time to pull the trigger. Anyone who knows my family knows this is a huge undertaking. My grandmother is a couple years shy of 90 and is mostly bedridden – my grandfather takes care of her full-time and we all predict that if they don’t make the move, he will be dead within a year.

My dad (who is heading up the whole process) and his three sisters are starting to go through all of their belongings, and it’s not pretty. My grandparents are moving from a four bedroom house into a two bedroom apartment, and they can only take the necessities. So attached to her “treasures,” my grandmother feels hopeless.

To make matters worse, all of this has to be done in a matter of months. The estate sale is in November, which means time is short to decide what gets divided up among the family and what ends up being sold along with the house.

This whole process has had me in a bit of a tailspin. All of this talk about stuff.

I will be the first to admit that I have a problem with it. Vann always jokes that I’m the perfect consumer. You show me a gorgeous girl in a pair of funky boots and a floaty scarf and I’m in – just tell me where to go to buy what she’s wearing. Over the years, being married to a man in the consumer business has proven interesting to me – I’ve learned a boatload about how grocery stores are designed to appeal to the mommy, what commercials play during the day to entice any woman to buy what they are selling, etc. Shoot…I’ve even been known to watch a little QVC from time to time.

But really – you can’t take it with you. In the end, you’re leaving this world the way you arrived.

Vann can tell you that I’ve really been struggling with the fact that our home improvement projects have come to a close for now. It doesn’t matter how many times other homeowners tell you that “you have all kinds of time” or “don’t worry about filling up every room,” you see all the things that need to be fixed or bought and you just drive yourself crazy.

I wanted so badly to have the guestroom and bathroom finished by Christmas. We still need breakfast room chairs and really want to paint the dining room as well. And let’s not even start on our master bath.

All of this sounds pretty selfish, doesn’t it? Remember my whole post about selfishness? Yeah, it’s rearing it’s ugly head right about now. The truth of the matter is that the coffers need to be refilled and so – big whoop.

Here’s the big question: Who really cares about all of that anyway? Will my friends be horrified when they see that only one out of four bathrooms has had the dated wallpaper replaced? Will they care that nothing is up on the walls yet and there are no window treatments??

The answer is NO. All of this plays in my head, and the devil loves it. He loves making me feel like the stuff around us is more important than anything else.

I think that this whole situation with my grandmother is incredibly timely. At 88 years old, instead of wanting her family to enjoy the things she has loved over the years, she is clinging to material things as if they are living creatures. It’s definitely a lesson for me to remember that none of this is ours anyway.

Matthew 6:19-21 says:

19″Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”