The Simple Life

Simplify Your Life.  

These 3 words, painted on a rustic wooden sign at a quiet Texas bed and breakfast, caught my attention 5 years ago.  I announced to Keith that that was my motto, and I would strive to simplify my life.  Ironically, we would soon discover that God had given us a 10 year anniversary surprise while we were at that bed and breakfast, and our 4th baby was on the way.  God must have a sense of humor because obviously having a 4th child is a decidedly complicating factor, and having 4 children under the age of 7 is far from "simple."  Well, unless you have 12 kids, in which case I'm sure 4 would be a piece of cake.  Still, the idea that we could experience simplicity as a family of 6 was appealing to me.   Could we swim against the current so to speak, and break the cultural trends to work more, to buy and consume more, to enroll in more activities, to spend more time in the car, to stress more, to constantly strive for more?   Could we simplify our life by removing the excess and focusing on what was truly important to us?

From my 2009 photo album

Moving to the other side of the world forced us to simplify in many ways.  In preparation for D-Day (departure day), we donated loads of our stuff to make room in the 40-foot container that would transport our belongings the 9,000+ miles to Brunei, where we knew we would have less space.  We down-sized from a 4 bedroom home to a 3 bedroom home.  We went from 3 bathrooms to 2 (smaller) bathrooms.  From 8 sinks (what?!?  I had to count several times to be sure) to 3 sinks.  A massive walk-in pantry to no pantry.  Large appliances (oven, fridge, dishwasher, washer/dryer) to small Asian ones.  Obscenely cavernous his/hers walk-in closets off our gigantic bathroom, with built-in dressers and shelves, to 2 cupboards built into one wall of our bedroom.   An oversized 2-car garage to no garage.  2 floored attic storage spaces to no attic space.  12 or so local TV channels (no cable or satellite for us, part of our previous simple living) to no TV service at all.  Relatively nice used automobiles (automatic sliding doors, leather interior, DVD player) to crappy used vehicles (regular old doors that open outward- not fun with little kids and tight parking spaces, no CD player much less DVD, air conditioning that only cools on a cloudy day, car parts constantly falling off or breaking, and a sunroof that leaks water onto my lap when it rains.)   Unlike most "upwardly mobile" fellow suburbanites with 2 or 3 kids, on the quest for bigger and better, we were downsizing and downgrading, and seemingly regressing, with 4 kids.   And though we experienced some frustrations, at the same time it was strangely liberating.

While we once had virtually unlimited shopping venues, we now have just a couple of stores worth entering.  And forget about buying clothes here unless you want a shirt, like I did, that says "Love Me Sweet and Glamorous, You Happy Paradise For", or some other poorly translated slogan!   No more wandering the aisles of Target… sigh…  but, decisions are a lot easier when there aren't 14 rows of cereals, or 50 brands of moisturizer, or any alcohol whatsoever.   You choose one out of the three available options, or do without, and you're done.   It's actually appalling the amount of stress that can arise just from having too many choices as we did in America!

Simplification also came in non-material forms.  We exchanged the busy, frantic pace of city life for the tranquil, calm pace of life in the "Abode of Peace."   We traded in a school bus and car rides for bicycles.  Keith's 45-minute commute to work in Houston traffic turned into a 10-minute bike ride through the jungle to his office.  No more driving all over town to various activities when all of the activities here are centrally located within biking distance at "the club."  We traded in the noises of the city - car horns, sirens, the steady hum of the highway - for the sounds of the jungle - wild birds, insects, frogs, and monkeys.

The past few months, I've been striving for further ways to simplify.  I've been reading up on the concept of "minimalism", which I've discovered is an entire philosophy and radical way of life, but also seems to me how Christians should be living anyway.   Some people take it to the extreme and strictly limit the items they own to a certain number.  Others interpret minimalism as eliminating the excess (possessions, time commitments, expenses, stress, etc.) in order to focus on what's important to them.  This is exactly what I had in mind when I made "Simplify Your Life" my motto.  We don't "need" everything society tells us we need.  We have enough.  We have way more than enough.  That has become more evident since living here.  Over the past several months we have been clearing out even more clutter, donating some of it, and selling a lot of it.  Friends are asking if we're moving soon because we've gotten rid of so many things!  Even the kids are embracing this philosophy and learning that STUFF doesn't make you happy in the long run.  By giving up things, we create more time and space for shared experiences, travel, and helping others.  It's an ongoing process as we figure out as a family how to live with less in a world that constantly tells us we need more, but it's also a very rewarding process.  As Romans 12:2 says, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…"   We still have a long way to go, but our mindset is gradually being transformed.

While we can't stay in the Brunei bubble forever, I'm thankful to have the time here to cultivate a more minimalist lifestyle.  I hope that we will be able to take what we learn into the "real world" and continue to pursue a more simple life.