The Courage To Go Couchless

Last year we gave away our couch. We had no intention of replacing it, either.

Did you know it is legal to not have a couch in your living room? No C.P's (Couch Police) come to your door and write you a ticket. Even though every other house in the United States has a couch, you are breaking no laws if your house doesn't have one.

Amazing.

But sometimes your friends and neighbors say things about your couchlessness. And that's the test--can you stay couchless by choice or will you give into must-have-a-couch pressure?

We are still couchless. And we are still happy that way. Tom has his recliner for watching movies and two feet away I have my 1960's pink comfy chair designed for one-and-a-half people. I lay across its wide arms, with my feet upon the side table and my afghan over me--and am content.

Maybe our going couchless wasn't just because a couch takes up too much room in our sunroom... Maybe it was our way of rebelling against the accepted norm. Maybe the fact that our sunroom is actually what we use as a living room--although it's just half its size--well, maybe that's our way of rebelling, too.

Or maybe it's one of those little things God has us do now and then to loosen our white-knuckled grip upon The World. A little reminder that this world is not our home, not really, so we don't need to be acting like it is by blending in and having what everyone else has. And by being what everyone else is.

Some revolutions are good. They just might jerk us out of ruts we dug for ourselves--ruts we dug because everyone else had a shovel in their hand and were digging ruts of their own.


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"Our Lord begins to bring us into the place where we can have communion with Him, and we groan and say--'Oh Lord, let me be like other people!'" ... Oswald Chambers