Sale Day

Friday night, Allen and the kids headed to his parents' for the weekend. Jennifer's family went to her in-laws' place. I picked up salads from Jason's Deli and she and I ate before we headed to the mess in her garage. All week, Ema, Simone, Cay (a lady in our Bible study group) and I have taken turns dropping off our carloads of boxed "excess"-- all the things we have been purging as we've been working through our separate 7-projects.

We decided to wait until Friday night to start sorting through things, to price everything, and to set it all out neatly. With 12 hours to go till we opened the door, Ema, Simone, Jennifer and I stood in the overflowing garage... staring at the piles... shivering as the cold front approached... almost in tears of defeat, but struggling to keep it together. All four of us were trying to follow someone's directions because we couldn't think on our own -- we were all THAT overwhelmed and didn't know what to do, but we acted like everything was fine. One of us finally admitted what she was feeling and we all grouped together in agreement that "THIS was just too much!" Together, we prayed that God would give us peace and direction, that everything would come together smoothly, that the weather would work in our favor, that He would bless our crazy project that seemed to come together with His prompting. After our Amens, we all went to different corners of the garage, we all worked smoothly and cheerfully, and everything DID come together miraculously.

Saturday morning threatened rain, so in the dark hours of the morning, we fought to assemble the canopy that would keep our outside tables dry. The day went well, though we were cold a lot of the time. Even as early (and dark) as 7:00AM when we opened the door, we had a constant flow of shoppers -- not just looking, but actually buying all the stuff that we, at one point, couldn't live without. Just after noon, we realized we didn't have much left, so we started consolidating -- emptying tables and boxes as room was made in other places in the garage. As we started moving it all inside the garage, we also started sorting things into boxes for Salvation Army to pick up, for Ema and I to take to St. Paul, for the library, and for other new homes for our extras. While we were sorting, a lady told us her church was doing a garage sale to support a mission trip for teens, and we sent a lot of the stuff with her. The rest fit in Ema's, Simone's, and my cars for us to deliver to other charities. After we loaded the cars and had the rest cleaned up, we headed inside the house to count the money and the sky opened up and poured. It really worked out perfectly, but it is the whole story all together that is really quite awesome...

Last fall, I was reading 7 because a friend recommended it. Before I finished it, I bought three more copies and gave them to Ema, Simone, and Jennifer to read. This was one of the few times everyone read it immediately (we often pass around books, but rarely read them so quickly.) By November, we all decided to do the 7 projects when the new year started, but we also decided to do a trial of the "reduce stress" experiment for December. In January, all of us did different versions of food fasts, but we started talking about how we would handle clothes in February. In February, the three of them purged their closets (mine was already recently reduced.) As they gathered excess clothing, they decided to start doing more of their homes and just have a garage sale and give all the proceeds to a charity. I figured that since I was giving stuff away in March, I wouldn't have anything left to sell, but I planned to help them with the three-family garage sale, especially since it would be for a good cause. All of us have been, in some way, donating to PCM, so that was already one of the charities we talked about donating part of the money. Meanwhile, God put the mission trip on my heart and I chose to go on the one with PCM. My awesome friends decided all the proceeds would go toward my trip, which would cost around $3200. In the end, I actually had PLENTY to add to the sale (or maybe I just found more that we could live without...) and all of us had more than we realized. Friday night, the gals were talking about how close to $3000 we thought we could get -- knowing that was a crazy amount. They didn't realize that I had already paid for half the trip, and when I told them so, they relaxed a little bit. As I was falling asleep Friday night, I realized that I had several donations come in earlier in the week that were for my travel expenses. In the morning, I told them that I really only needed about $1000 more, and they were excited because that seemed possible. When we got together and counted out the proceeds, we had more than $1100!! God provided everything we needeed -- from the peace on Friday night, to finding new homes for all our junk excess stuff, to the funds to finish out my trip expenses, to holding the rain back until we were finished with the sale.

When I got home, I entered the donations into my spreadsheet. I was a bit surprised at my miscalculations. It turned out I only needed $800, so we had more than $300 left that would all go to purchase shoes for the children I'll be visiting -- I couldn't WAIT to tell my sweet friends that happy news!