Skip to main content

Unstuff by Hayley and Michael DiMarco

Unstuff: Making Room in Your Life for What Really Matters

Unstuff: Making Room in Your Life for What Really Matters by the DiMarco’s is a book that I thought would help me get the rest of my junk out of my garage. I was surprised to discover that it was that and so much more.


The basic principle is that anything that is not God is stuff. Even the things that we do in service to God can be stuff, they can take up room in our mental and physical lives and prevent us from truly worshiping God. The book has six different areas that typically need unstuffing: Wallet Stuff, Mind Stuff, Body Stuff, Love Stuff, Worship Stuff, and Future Stuff.

The two areas that hit me the hardest are Body and Love. I was challenged in the body stuff about acceptable sin:

Just look around the pews at your local church and see how many people there are carrying unhealthy weight. If we looked around the church and saw that exact number of people smoking cigarettes, would we be as calm? Or what if the same number of people were groping their partners or wearing tube tops, short shorts, and fishnet stockings? Would we be outraged? (DiMarco pg 90)

I’m still noodling on that one and trying to figure out why some things are acceptable to me and others are not; something that I am trying to unstuff for sure.

The Love part was the other area and it was not the love of my husband or family that struck me most but the love of friends. I have a strong desire to spend more time with those that I love and to create even more bonds with those that I do not yet know. I have the unique privilege of being a pastor’s wife, so I have the opportunity to love on lots of people, but it is difficult to make the time to develop those relationships as much as I want. Unstuff has challenged me to push beyond some of my personal desires for rest and privacy in order to achieve my real desire to love deeply.

Unstuff is well written and challenging. I loved all the little sidebars, but I felt like the design of the book could have been better done with the text. Sometimes I was torn between reading the sidebars and reading the rest of the text on the next page. Over all, I highly recommend this book and hope to find a discussion guide for it so that I can read it again with friends.

A complimentary copy of this book was given to me by Tyndale House Publishers. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Hospitality for the Rest of Us: Long Distance

People are moving more and more. When I was a youngster, it was a rare instance for a friend to move away. Now it's me that moves away. We've moved a lot, especially when we first got married. It was something like five addresses and three states in the first four years of our marriage. We've slowed down a bit. In the midst of all that moving, we've made some friends along the way. I try to keep an open line in case of times of grief and celebration. One of the best tools I've found for keeping in touch with loved ones far away is Facebook. As much time as I could spend doing other things instead of checking it, it's the best thing I've found. It allows me to communicate with others, without having to call. I know calling is amazing, hearing people's voices, but for introverts, there are no body language clues for us to pick up on that help make our conversations easier. It's also why we prefer to video chat :-) Back to Facebook, some etiquette.

Stories from the Kitchen: Taste and See

I celebrated my birthday last weekend. It was wonderful and the leftovers left me with a question or two. Find out what they are and how I'm currently answering them in this week's podcast. Stories from the Kitchen Season 2, Episode 2: Taste and See Notes from the episode: Taste and See by Margaret Feinberg Dad’s New York Cheesecake (from the back of a Philidelphia Cream Cheese package) 1 ⅞ cups graham cracker crumbs ¼ to ½ cup butter, melted 1 cup sugar, divided 2 lbs cream cheese (4 packs) 2 large eggs (lightly beaten) 1 tsp vanilla 2 tbsp cornstarch 1 cup sour cream Preheat oven to 450F Mix well graham crackers, 2 tbsp sugar, and enough butter that the mixture holds together. Reserve 2 tbsp for garnish. Press mixture onto bottom and sides of a greased 9-inch springform pan. Chill in the freezer while preparing the filling. Mix cream cheese and sugar until smooth and light. Beat in eggs, vanilla, and cornstarch until just blended. S

Threadbare Knees

I feel sure that you've heard the saying "If life gives you lemons, make lemonade."  Well, recently I picked up a pair of wool cashmere blend slacks from Salvation Army and upon further inspection at home, the knees were threadbare, practically holes.  Easy enough to miss, when your knees don't fall in the same spot as the previous owner.  They were inexpensive, so it wasn't a big monetary loss, but I felt like it would be a shame to toss such nice fabric and so I searched the internet to see what I could do.  I found this cute little purse pattern, for free!   You can go check it out by clicking here . It is a great little pattern and I was able to make the entire purse in one rainy day!  Here are some pictures of my threadbare knees purse. Don't you just love those little pleats? And there's even a little pocket inside.  I'm so impressed with myself! Time to fill it up with my keys and such non-sense! And remember, when life gives you th