One of the real liberations Lisa and I have experienced during this adventure in Pennsylvania is enjoying living with less.  Our little camper can simply not hold very much stuff and we have learned all our stuff back home is more of a burden than a blessing.  Don’t get me wrong – we miss much about being at home such as our nice, soft, king size bed.  But really with the exception of our family and friends there is not much else we miss.

Living with less is something, I believe, we all think about now and then.  I can’t count the number of times I went into our basement at home and looked at all the boxes and junk stored there and thought about trashing it all.  But something always kept me from the great purge.  I would see the boxes of old toys our kids accumulated and could never dream of pitching those out.  The old clothes that have not been worn in years may come back in style and we certainly could never throw away any of our treasured Christmas decorations – even if we never set them out for Christmas.  God forbid that we would get rid of all the books that have already been read or never will be.

So I just want everyone to know that Lisa and I have now survived going on three weeks without all that stuff from back home and we are doing fine.  I don’t know if you can believe this or not but we have survived three weeks without: Direct TV; without a dishwasher; without all the dishes in our cabinets; without three bedrooms and two baths; without a backdoor; without two cars; without that old broken computer stored in our basement; without a lawn mower or a lawn; and believe it or not without McDonalds (no we have not had McDonalds in three weeks and my blood pressure is almost normal again).

Two of my heros in life are Jesus and Jack Reacher of the Lee Child novels.  Both men seemed to live on very little.  We know almost nothing of Jesus having much in way of worldly possessions and he certainly preached against treasuring things of earth.  Reacher likewise travels light – usually carrying only a toothbrush then drifts from place to place beating up all the bad guys.  If he gets a shirt torn or even dirty – he throws it away and buys another – but just one.  I like both those guys and am working hard to be like Jesus – besides  I could never be like Reacher who is 6’4″  and a martial arts expert.

I will say that Lisa and I are not quite to that level yet.  In fact – we actually packed enough toothpaste to last until 2015.  I’m not sure why we thought we would need that much toothpaste.  I suppose old habits are hard to break.

Keep it simple and stay in touch!

Steve and Lisa