I’ve always been a collector.

In kindergarten, it was beads and buttons. I’d scour the blacktop for lost little treasures, looking under the thick metal-grid benches and in the corners of classrooms. The odder the shape, the more value to me. I still have a whole box of them in my childhood bedroom.

Then I saw The Avengers in theaters when it first came out. I was about eight, and already obsessed with Marvel. But Avengers began the long, slow process of assembling all the nerd stuff I could get my hands on. First, some T-shirts. Then a flat-back Thor baseball cap that I never took off. Then a Captain America hoodie that I stole from my brother.

Then came the action figures. And to be perfectly fair, the collection grew from Marvel to DC. I wanted it all.

I wanted every Spider-Man. Every Batman. Every Superman. The two favorites of my collection were a bronze-suited Nightwing (from some Batman animated show, I think) and a brightly colored Jubilee from the X-Men.

And then came the Funko Pops. That’s where the obsession thrived. My Amazon wishlist was devoured by those bug-eyed bobbleheads (although, I think Loki and Baby Groot were my only bobbleheads…) until there was nothing left. Marvel, Harry Potter, Gravity Falls—you name it, I wanted it.

And what started as a fun way to display my interests slowly grew into a FOMO-fueled ID badge. A thing for me to wave around and say, “See, I’m like this! This is me! I’m a nerd like you!”

And the older I got, the worse I became.

Defensive much?

At school, we just finished reading The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer.

In chapter two, Aiden (that’s Tozer, and I will continue to call him Aiden because it’s fun) talks about how wonderful it is to possess…nothing.

What? Nothing?

For a chronic collector like me, that was hard to swallow. What does it mean to own nothing? What is Aiden tryin’ to tell me, huh? I’m allowed to like things. To have things. Right?

Aiden begins the chapter by saying that, in Genesis, man was given many things. “They were made for the man’s use,” Aiden says, “but they were meant always to be external to the man and subservient to him.”

He goes on to say that inside, in the very heart of man, was supposed to be a shrine for none other than God. And guess what? Sin evicted God from that spot, and turned all those nice good “things,” those gifts from God, into potential pitfalls. “Things” started filling up that heart space. “Things” were no longer external to man, but embedded deep in his heart.

Man became possessive.

But not me!

I’m totally the exception to this rule. I’m not possessive. Right? I collect things in a normal way…

*crickets*

Aiden goes on to talk about Abraham and Isaac. That story had always puzzled me—how could God ask Abraham to kill his own son? A son God had promised to Abraham?

But of course, God doesn’t let Abraham go through with it. Why?

The angel tells Abraham, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” (Genesis 22:12).

In Aiden’s words: “It’s alright, Abraham. I never intended that you should actually slaw the lad. I only wanted to remove him from the temple of your heart that I might reign unchallenged there.”

After this encounter with God, Abraham still had everything he started with. His family, his cattle, his life. “He had everything,” Aiden says, “but he possessed nothing.”

How does that work?

Because Abraham turned over everything he had to God. He stopped being possessive. He put down his defenses and made no excuses. As Aiden puts it, “Whoever defends himself will have himself for his defense, and he will have no other. But let him come defenseless before the Lord and he will have for his defender no less than God Himself.“

And that forced me to think:

What am I holding onto that’s challenging God’s place in my heart, and how am I defending it?

I’m totally buff.

Movie buff, that is. I love movies and television and everyone knows that.

And like my Funko Pop collection, it had started getting out of hand.

I have a great DVD collection. I usually pick one up every time I visit Goodwill. I’m usually pretty lucky; there’s often at least one of my favorite movies lurking on the thrift store shelf.

But as I read that chapter of The Pursuit of God, I got convicted.

My DVD collection had started off innocent enough. There was nothing objectively wrong with it. But I was lying about it—defending something because secretly, I knew it was a problem.

I told myself that I constantly bought DVDs, “Because physical media is important.”

And that’s true—I think physical media is important. But my pants were all the way on fire, because that wasn’t what this was about.

Once again, it was about identity.

I learn a lot from movies. It’s a storytelling tool I love, one that inspires me. But I started convincing myself that I was failing every time I didn’t expand my collection. It became less and less about growing as a storyteller, and more and more about putting my identity in “things.” I wanted to be known as the movie girl. I wanted people to look at my collection and go, “Hey, that’s who Lucy is.”

That’s what was taking up the heart-shrine. That’s what I was defending.

I had displaced God without even knowing it. I’d started buying movies out of obligation—half the time they weren’t even movies I cared that much about.

Some weeks passed, and I sort of forgot about it. (Great job, Lucy…) I know.

But the next time I went thrifting, God was kind enough to gently remind me.

I was looking for a dress to wear to my friend’s wedding. I stopped by the movie rack… I picked up two DVDs—I know one was Ella Enchanted (one of my faves). I texted my roommate: Do we have Ella Enchanted?!

And as I waited by the checkout for her reply, a little voice nudged me.

Does it matter, though?

I frowned at the DVD cover. It was true. It didn’t. Whether I owned it already or not, I didn’t have to buy it. I shouldn’t buy it, in fact. I didn’t need it. I had plenty of things, and I wasn’t losing anything by continuing to not-own a movie I’d seen countless times.

The obvious truth raised its head: I didn’t have to control everything. I didn’t have to hold on so tight. I didn’t have to turn good gifts into a hoard of ID badges.

My “cowardly heart,” as Aiden puts it, “fears to give up its toys.”

But it doesn’t need to.

We don’t need to fear.

We can just take a deep breath and put the DVD down.

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