First, See What You Can Do With What You Have

That's the other big theme of my life right now - besides Mountain Climbing.

Here's a bunch of examples.

1. Camera

I mentioned before that I will need a better camera to take really quality photos, but I did the 30-Day Photo Challenge to see what I could do with the camera I had.

2. Clothes

In a video-chat with my sister, she complained that I was wearing a man's flannel top. I explained that I had two blouses that umm... fail to go all the way to my jeans in the back; two sleeveless tops that were too cold for winter; and one other top that I had worn the day before. I have only 3 jeans I can wear in public, and 3 skirts, two of which will not fit me at the same time. We agreed that if she ever wins it big with all those lottery tickets that she never buys, she'll get me a new wardrobe.

I need to catch up with Ken.

Until then, I am learning what I can do with what I have. For instance... one cute sweater¹ solves the too-cold and too-short blouse issues ².


3. House

I dream of getting a house, and we will be looking into the possibility of buying one later this year, but in the meantime, I have been learning what can be done with the space we got, by getting rid of the clutter, arranging things nicely, and generally trying to make the apartment a more pleasant place to live.

My latest obsession. Doesn't it just scream "home" to you?

4. Writing

I sense, too, that God has future plans for both my blog and for whatever book-writing I do, but that for now, I'm in the phase of learning and experimenting to find out what works best.


5. Gifts

I often have gift ideas in mind for people, but ever since I became an adult, I've generally been too poor to act on them. This year, I felt God leading me to buy my dad a gift on Epiphany. I think this betokens a dawning age in which I participate in this foreign ritual that other people do... but for now I still can't go crazy with it.

Dad got a Kindle version of this. I'm not quite sure how my copy got so abused.

6. Skin Care

I mentioned I was working on taking care of my skin. After finishing off the bottle of vanilla lotion that I loved, I was frustrated by my lack of funds to buy more. Then it occurred to me that I should see what I could do with the lotion I already had. Turned out I had another four or five bottles of lotions, which nicely lasted me until I had could buy more last Friday.

I don't think I'll use the baby oil again, except as last resort.

7. Phone

I've been lusting after an iPhone lately, despite the fact that I really don't need one. I decided that if I ever want to be a serious cell phone owner, I should start by seeing what I can do with the little prepaid cell that I have. Things like...

• Charging it each night instead of waiting a week for it to die.
• Not putting it in the same pocket with my watch that will scratch it.
• Getting in the habit of silencing it at appropriate times, and then remembering to turn it back on.
• Actually, like, maybe using it some of the time.³

I put a sticker on it to tell it apart from Ken's identical phone.

(I also saw a version of this clip about appreciating the awesomeness of limited technology, which made a very good point.)

8. Bible

The various Bibles I had been using have been falling apart for ages. When Ken started RCIA, I bought him a new Bible, but didn't have enough money left at the time to buy myself one too. His was so pretty and the translation was so much better than the one I had been reading from ⁴, that I really wanted my own pretty Bible. I kept finding my money needing to go towards other things, however. When I got frustrated and prayed about it, I felt God's answer was essentially to see what I could do with what I had. So I started reading from Ken's. It turns out, reading from a Bible that's not "mine" forces me to practice being extra careful with it. So my next Bible, down the road, might not get destroyed so quickly as my past ones.

Plus, his is just awesomeness layered on awesomeness.

So what about you? Is God telling you to see what you can do with what you have, before moving on to a better version?


<sup>1. Ever so slightly like this one.

2. Other bits of learned wisdom: When cleaning with bleach, the professional thing to do is change into grunge clothes, to preserve the nice ones. And qhite patches in umm... protruding areas of a shirt, wink wink... get grubby faster than colored patches elsewhere.

3. Because I am one of the 5 remaining people on the planet with a home phone, the prepaid cell phone doesn't get much use.

4. Even though they were both St. Joseph Edition NABs. Two or three times, though, I would look up a passage on biblos.com to get a feel for the Greek, and find that the phrasing in the old NAB was distinctly lacking in nuance, but that the new 2nd-edition NAB that I bought Ken had captured it perfectly.</sup>