The Sticker Problem

Do you remember sticker books?

Maybe they were an ’80s thing.  I grew up with them: tiny little albums where you could stick the stickers you collected.  And I collected loads.  Sheets of smiley faces in different colors.  Winnie the Pooh on various adventures.  Bible verses.  Crosses.  Flowers. 

With the stickers emerged a problem: I couldn’t let them go.

I was obsessed with not “wasting” them.  Nothing seemed particularly worthy of my favorite stickers.  I would slap the multi-color smileys on everything hither and yon but the really good stickers?  The ones with cute koala bears or a meaningful Scripture or a Celtic cross?  Maybe I would stick one reverently in a sticker book as a reminder of the set, but otherwise I hoarded them for a perfect moment that never came.

I am not alone in this particular weirdness.  Thanks to social media, I understand that others have experienced a so-called sticker reluctance as well.  When my mom passed away and I was looking for some critical paperwork in her desk, I uncovered a folder of roughly ten billion stickers—and found myself laughing in spite of everything.  Like mother, like daughter, after all.

And really, it’s so hard to let go.

Not using the stickers is the same reason why I treasure small odds and ends with such intensity: I associate them with a happiness, a memory, and for some reason I fear the ephemeral nature of that happiness and that memory.  I don’t want to lose it.   I am the opposite of a minimalist. 

This is special, my thinking always goes. Better keep it till later.

I understand as an adult what my child self did not: that this is a scarcity mindset, a mindset that operates from fear of loss and fear of hurt.  Bound up in I should keep the special thing is an assumption, or maybe a question: because what if this is the last special thing, or the only special thing?

Keep what you have in hand now, my heart urges me.  Better to save it than lose it, because…

Because what?  Because, as a child, I worried maybe I did have the absolute coolest and best stickers and if I gave up Winnie the Pooh hugging his honeypot I might really regret it.  There might not be another sticker like that, another pretty piece of art like that.  Save it to look at it.  Save it to preserve the current good.

But really, at the core, this isn’t about material things at all.  It’s about not really believing that what’s ahead is going to be as great as now.  It’s about a bit of selfishness.  It’s about wanting to keep everything for me, wanting to preserve my happiness in amber just in case something comes along to crack it in the future.

It’s about having a misaligned sense of both “good” and “gift.”

The Bible speaks with explicit disdain of, and warning, for those who hoard the good.  There are a lot of people referenced in Scripture who are trying to preserve the now.  The Israelites are hoarding manna in case the next day doesn’t prove fruitful.  Proverbs is stuffed with lessons about men who stack up gold and jewels and profits to secure their futures and then essentially drop dead on top of them all.

All of these warnings serve as a reminder: a) we can hold loosely to things not because we despise attachment to them (we’re not Buddhist) but because Christ is giver and redeemer and restorer, and God knows and marks what is lost and will ensure we have everything we need, and b) because we understand that everything that endures is not wrapped up in things but in Love.

It was not the business of child me, of course, to grasp all of this.  And not over stickers.

But I am reflecting on it of late because somehow I’ve started my sticker habit again.  I picked up a pack here and a pack there and now somehow I have a little collection going.  And today, writing a card, I went to put on a sticker and found myself pausing. I remembered how misaligned this idea of keeping the very best is with a Christ who tells us to lose our life to find it. I kept pausing in spite of myself.

That one’s too nice—

I laughed at myself then, because old habits die hard. And after that I picked out the biggest best sticker and stuck it on a card to my dad.  Because why not?  I can learn to let go; I can learn to give away good things; I can learn even now that happiness given is happiness gained.  I can learn that loss never means loss for us by God’s accounting; I can practice sacrifice in the smallest places; I can loosen my grasp.

God is the giver of every good thing, and He never loses interest in giving.

In that case, I’ll try not to, either.