I’m a hard person to live with. I like to organize and plan for what will happen in the future. Not so much a worrier as much as wanting to be prepared for what is coming. I euphemistically call myself a problem solver. The truth is I like to consider all details so I won’t be blindsided when events happen.
Does it work? I’ve recently come to the conclusion that it does not. The things that happen in real life are infinitely more tragic, messy, funny, and joyous than I could imagine. There is no way to factor life’s events in your head. Who knows what will give you the moment of happiness or sorrow in your life?
True enough, events like losing my son to cancer, are things that you know will hurt. What you don’t know is that a life event like this will break your heart into so many pieces that, like Humpty Dumpty, nothing can ever put it together again. Until I am in heaven with my family reunited, there will always be an essential piece of my life and heart missing.
For the longest time after my son passed away, I let my broken heart have sway in my life. I was like a jigsaw puzzle that could not be finished – pretty much useless. I filled my life with busy work so that I would not have to think about how my life was to be without one of my children.
The busy work started to become my life. As I would finish with one avenue, I would begin a second one. Pretty soon, my behavior became not only obsessive but actually controlled and became my life. While I had always gone headlong into new ventures and hobbies, it went into overdrive. I would center around one business or hobby and then move to another. Each time, the new hobby et al would make me happy and then, again, each time it would become a mere accumulation of stuff and dissatisfaction until I found the next area to immerse myself into.
In the meantime, quite a bit of the remainders of the previous obsessions started to accumulate. Not hoarder status but certainly more than anyone should keep in their lives. When it added to the leftover stock from my internet business, the bulk became unwieldy. We moved into a bigger house twice because those were the homes we found that we liked. However, it also allowed me to store my stuff and still move to another hobby.
Then came the Amazon Vine offer. This is a program that Amazon has which allows invited individuals to choose certain items (from a list that Amazon provides) to use and to review (on Amazon.) While these items are noted as free, the truth is reviewers pay income taxes on them so the products become the wages for the work of the reviewer.
I almost threw the offer away thinking it was a scam but instead, I joined. That was seven years ago. Reviewing became my new hobby. I not only took the items from Vine but also started making the bulk of my purchases through Amazon so that I could also review them.
My reviewing hobby suddenly became much more than that. It started to control not only me but also my husband. When I started climbing the ranks of reviewers, I was shocked, mainly because I didn’t know that reviewers had ranks. I had found my niche of reviews and used those to climb to their #1 reviewer status.
This turned out to be anti-climatic. All the work that went into this endeavor was shown to be an utter waste of time. There I was, at the pinnacle, and nothing real to show for it. Worse still, even though I had attained this high rank, I felt like I still needed to work to maintain it. Something I never wanted and was surprised by, something that meant nothing at all, suddenly became even more of a chore than any hobby had been before.
While I actually enjoying using the hobby items I purchased and I also enjoyed the writing of those reviews, it was the effort of putting those reviews on Amazon that took my time and was a source of great unhappiness in my life. I knew that my reviews were helpful as many individuals told me so. I also knew that I had accumulated at least three individuals who made it their lives work to tear me apart.
So I continued unabated.
In the meantime, my health was deteriorating for a variety of reasons – none of which had anything to do with my obsession turned addiction. However, staying home and at my computer also took its toll on my health and made the other conditions worse. I got to the point where there were only a handful of items I could eat without becoming violently ill. That went on for a number of years. I became weaker and suffered from malnutrition.
About a year ago, a doctor finally listened to what I was saying about what was wrong with me. She ordered tests and we found my diagnosis and treatment was two simple pills a day. With that change, I was suddenly able to eat more foods. I also had a long awaited surgery that made it easier for me to lift and carry items.
My mindset was starting to change along with my health. When, a few months later, Amazon dropped a tenth of their reviewers in the Vine program, I was one of them. When I asked my husband how he felt about it, he said okay. He asked me how I felt and all I could say was “Thank, God, it’s over.”
Well, it wasn’t quite over. I still continued to buy my hobby items and to review them. However, it was with less intensity. It still took an enormous amount of time and effort – mostly due to the bugs in the Amazon review system that took putting in a written review, video and photos a four day long ordeal. That was in addition to actually using and testing the product, coming to a conclusion about it and finally writing the review.
Worse still, I had somehow come to care about how this unwieldy system worked. I would write recommendations to Amazon’s executive staff. Some of which they used, some they did not. Yet another effort that took up much of my time. Not to mention that I was providing hours and hours of free work per week to a half-trillion dollar company.
It was at this point that I became very ill and was hospitalized. For nine days, I could have cared less about what had seemed so important before. When I got home from the hospital, I took a break but then wrote a few reviews. I had the same problems and it took much too much of my time.
It was around this time that God told me to stop putting my hobby reviews on Amazon. I could continue my blog and vlog but Amazon, for those items, was not allowed for a season.
I stepped back and put my effort into working on my improving my health and, too, into writing for this blog.
Then I heard a sermon about false idols and false gods. I learned that all sorts of things can be your false god. I was challenged to look at my life and look to see where my time, effort, thoughts and money were being placed. At that moment, I realized that I had created my false god in Amazon.
Once I understood that, I was able to put it behind me and drop all cares and concerns about things that were not real in life. To turn my back on the false god that I made with my own hands as surely as the Israelites had made their golden calf in the wilderness.
Instead, I am now looking at what is good and true and real. That is the love of Jesus Christ as my savior, the Holy Spirit as my guidance counselor and my Father, the Lord, as He provides for me all that is right and just and perfect.
With the help of God, I have left behind the addictions of the past. That is not only the reviewing habit but also the obsessive behavior I had indulged in since my son’s death. We are enjoying giving away what we can and also enjoying throwing away that which we cannot. Our lives are becoming both freer and richer with each less belonging that we have.
I understand now why Jesus challenged the young rich man to give up his possessions. The things of the world will tie you down and distract you when what you need to do is to move forward and to love and follow and worship God. For me, that means to stop trying to plan my life but instead to let God take care of me and do as He asks of me.
John 4:21-24 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”