We shared a rock and stared at the brilliant sunset. Some things you can count on, I said, a thaw in January, a frost in May, and every day a brilliant day in autumn in Potsdam.

This is my favorite season; I wait for it every year and nearly cry when the last maple leaf has fallen and the ground we walk on has become crispy with ice tipped blades of grass. Strange that I would leave when I stand on the cusp of something I love. Instead this season will be a season of replacement. I will replace my favorite colors and time of the year with a land that last week was still experiencing 107 degree temperatures and sports one consistent color: beige.

I heard a sermon a few weeks ago in which the speaker talks about St. Augustine's Disordered Loves and how the root of all sin is a disordered love (I love money more than generosity so I am selfish, instant gratification more than patience so I am impulsive, things more than people so I am stingy, etc.). I am reminded a lot recently of what my mother said to someone who expressed concern that I wasn't getting baptized with all my other 13 year old peers, "When Lore makes a decision, she'll do it 210%, and there will be no forcing her beforehand." I'm grateful for a parent who recognized the virtue in my then-present disordered love: stubbornness. I may take a long time to come around, but when I do, you can usually count on my loyalty.

So it is with gusto that I part ways with nearly everything I own, shoving books and dressers and lamps and anything you'll take into your hands. "Are you sad to see it go?" you ask. No! I think. But only say "No." Lest you think I am cold-hearted and calloused. My loves are so disordered that I don't even know what love is these days. Is it attachment? Is it contentment? Is it security? And, most of all, is it in something other than Jesus?

So this morning when I left the dentist several hundred dollars poorer, and the other night when I paid all of our bills, and the other day when I mailed off a few checks to unassuming people, and when I gave you the dresser I've had since I was younger and the books that once I treasured, and anything else that might be in the way of loving Jesus and me, I think one thing to myself. What does love feel like and when will I know it the way the woman who pushed through the crowd knew it? She loved her healing more than she loved Jesus because she didn't know Jesus, but once she was healed, and that was out of the way, then she loved Jesus alone.

And I want that.

I want to replace and replace and replace until my orders are to love Him and Him alone. That's it.