It is amazing how a move can rearrange your priorities.

We have moved. We packed up the house in Branson West with a lot of help from our friends and family at First Christian Church on June 1. On June 2, about fifteen people from our new church in Mountain View, MO, came and loaded us up and moved us to Mountain View.

Today, two and a half weeks later, I still can’t find things that I thought were so important, just a couple of weeks ago.

For example, I kept out a certain movie that I knew the kids would want to watch, since it’s new (Horton Hears A Who). I kept it out so I would know right where it was. As it turns out, I should have packed it with the rest of the DVDs. It is nowhere to be found.

I’m sure it’ll turn up. We have a lot of boxes in the garage yet to unpack. It is probably in there somewhere.

But the kids have completely forgotten about it. There are new things in our day to day lives that have captured their attention. And the new movie is suddenly not so special…

And it’s not just the kids who have been affected by this realignment of our priorities. Heather and I have discovered that certain things aren’t as important as we once thought.

We have often thought that we have too much “stuff.” And we do. Maybe now would be a great time to downsize a little. If we haven’t missed some of these things in the past couple of weeks, maybe we can do without them permanently. So, as we unpack, especially as we unpack the things that we have discovered to be non-essentials (we’ve found all of the essentials already), we will be donating them to thrift stores, or to the garbage man.

Maybe we can simplify our lives a little by reducing stuff, and thereby reducing stress.

It’s a worthy goal, anyway.