Purging is Painfull!

Every day I fill the recyclable container with cards, letters, programs, church bulletins and all manner of stuff.  I fill the trash container with VHS tapes, cassette tapes, and odds and ends.  I brought five small bags of pots, frames, and other stuff to the Goodwill receptacle.

My goal in the last few days is to sort through the boxes of stuff we took when Jim's mom closed up her own apartment.  I have emailed Jim's siblings several times to ask what we should do with recipe boxes, old jewelry, sermon tapes and diaries over many years.  And then there are the volumes Jim's dad wrote of studies on books of Scripture or the Belgic Confession.

I am sad because these all were things Jim's mom thought were worth saving--letters of sympathy, poems written for their farewell events at various churches, her hand-written notes on Dad's catechism sermons over the years.  And now I am throwing them away.

But not everything!  I read with interest another account of Rev. Vander Kam's life. I read one of the sermons in the pictured notebook and it was as if I could hear him preach again.  And it was a powerful sermon!

 I was saddened however to read his 1992 letter of resignation from the Christian Reformed Church and his request to move his credentials to the True Reformed Church that he helped organize and felt was true to the historic faith   I know a precipitating factor was the ordination of women as church officers.  He never knew, I think, that I was one of the first female elders in our church.   I was dismayed to read his defense of the historicity of Genesis 1-11 stating that this issue was not even something anyone should appoint a committee to evaluate.

I was particularly touched by two personal letters asking him to accept a call to Doon, Iowa, a very small rural congregation that needed a pastor who could be a strong leader.  At the time he was nearing retirement and had been a pastor of a church in Florida for just 20 months, a situation that was difficult for him.   This was a good move for him personally and for the Doon church but it led to more divisiveness in the larger denomination when he helped to start a new seminary truer to the traditional beliefs.   He was able to fulfill a lifetime goal of being a professor and he was much appreciated in that setting.

What will I do with all my diaries and journals?  Who will want the paintings, the music books, the novels I have treasured?  What about my wedding dress and other items I have kept for sentimental value?  What about the dishes I inherited from my great-aunt or the silverplate that came from my mother? This is a process that is painful and time-consuming but will have to be done.  I'm glad I have the ability and the leisure time to do it thoughtfully. But it does bring on a certain melancholy of spirit.