When I first started giving things away, I thought I was signing up for a story about decluttering. Tidier drawers. Simpler mornings. Less to dust.
What I didn’t expect is that letting go of my stuff would end up teaching me more about trusting God than almost anything else in my life. And it started with the dumbest possible thing: a gravy bowl.
I’ve been sitting with three moments from that season lately, and I wanted to use this space to go deeper into them than I usually let myself in day-to-day conversation.
The Gravy Bowl Test
When you own a house full of stuff, there’s a quiet sense of safety in it. A closet full of options for every possible situation. A garage full of just-in-case. A pantry stocked for six months. I didn’t realize how much of my sense of security was actually tied up in having enough stuff to handle whatever came—until I started giving it away.
The one that got me was a gravy bowl. This sweet little dish I probably used twice a year, when a coffee cup would’ve done the exact same job. Then there was my cherry pitter—one job, one season, sitting in a drawer the other eleven months, taking up space I didn’t have anymore.
Letting go of things like that felt almost silly to be hard about. They’re just kitchen tools. But that’s exactly what stopped me in my tracks: if I couldn’t let go of a gravy bowl, what did that say about how tightly I was holding onto everything else?
That’s where minimalism stopped being about my kitchen and started being about trust. Learning that I don’t need three ways to do one job—I just need enough. And underneath that, learning that God would give me enough too.
Every box I gave away ended up being a small test. Did I actually trust God to provide what I needed later, or did I need to keep proving to myself that I could provide it on my own? Most days, I didn’t love the answer. And it wasn’t only physical stuff, either — I noticed the same white-knuckle grip in how I held onto plans, backup plans, and backup plans for the backup plans. Minimalism started in my closet. It didn’t stay there.
Daily Bread, Not a Warehouse
There’s a story tucked into Exodus about manna—the bread God provided for the Israelites while they wandered the wilderness. They could only gather enough for one day. If they tried to stockpile extra for tomorrow, it spoiled overnight (Exodus 16).
I used to read that and think it was mostly about following the rules. Now I think it was about trust. God wasn’t just feeding them. He was retraining an entire generation out of the hoarding instinct that comes from fear, one day at a time.
Living in 200 square feet does something similar to me, just on a much smaller scale. I can’t stockpile much of anything in here. I have to trust that when I need something, I’ll be able to get it — or that I didn’t actually need it as badly as I thought I did. It’s a small, physical version of learning to ask for today’s bread instead of hoarding enough for next year.
And honestly, I think most of us do some version of hoarding that has nothing to do with pantries. We hoard information so we feel prepared for anything. We hoard control over our schedules so nothing catches us off guard. None of that is inherently wrong—but I’ve started to notice how much of it comes from the same place a pantry stocked for six months comes from. Not trust. Fear, dressed up as responsibility.
Something to sit with: Where in your life are you stockpiling—control, plans, information—instead of asking God for today’s portion?
An Empty Office
The other thing minimalism exposed in me was how much of my identity had quietly been built on what I owned. The house said something about who I was. The stuff inside it said something too. When all of that got stripped away, I had to figure out who I actually was underneath.
On closing day, I did one last walk-through. I ended up standing in my office — the room where I’d spent so much time — completely empty. No desk, no bookshelves, nothing on the walls. The light was still coming through the windows the same way it always had, but everything else was gone, and my footsteps echoed off the bare floor.
I’d stood in that room a hundred times before, but it had always been full—full of work, full of decisions, full of whatever I thought that room said about who I was. Standing there empty, it hit me: I wasn’t looking at an office anymore. I was looking at the outline of who I used to be. And I remember thinking, if this room doesn’t say anything about me anymore, what does?
What I found was that underneath the house, the stuff, and the version of myself I’d built out of both of those things, the identity that was actually still standing was the one God gave me. Not what I owned. Not what I’d built. Just His.
If You’re Still Working Through This
I’ll be honest — none of what I’ve written here means I’ve got this fully figured out. Giving away a gravy bowl was easy compared to actually living like I believe God will provide. That’s still very much a day-by-day thing for me, not a lesson I learned once and moved past.
If this resonated with you, I’d love to hear where you’re at.