I Sold My Desk

Sometime in the next six weeks, I’m going to give birth to my first baby.

I have to be honest and admit that I was never one of those girls who just dreamed of having children when I grew up. Of course I wanted to fall in love and get married, and I thought maybe someday I’d have kids, but I didn’t dream of having babies like so many of the other girls I knew. I never even considered the idea of staying home and taking care of kids for a living.

I dreamed of having a career and of pursuing my dreams and passions. Having kids felt like more of a deterrent, a detour, and a drudgery than it did a dream. Even into my college and adult years, I was more determined than ever to pursue work and career. It was that desire that ultimately led me to purchase this desk nine years ago, in 2014.

I found it on Craigslist for $55. When I contacted the seller, I asked if he would take $50 since I had to drive 30 minutes away to pick it up. He was an older gentleman who drove a hard bargain, and he refused my gentle and lowly request for a discount. The desk was a stark, bright, barn door red when I bought it, and on the tiny balcony of my Bible school apartment, with absolutely zero furniture refurbishing knowledge, I painted the whole thing white.

At first I used the desk for storage and homework and writing checks to pay my bills. But slowly, as I moved out of that season and into the next, I started using it to read the Word and journal, and then eventually, to write.

Over the years, God used my time sitting at this desk to speak to me and impart knowledge and wisdom into me as I learned to read the Word. He used it to form and mold and humble me. He used it to discipline and correct me. He used it to give me a greater revelation of who he is and to bring me closer to him.

He brought this desk into my life when I knew hardly anything about him or myself; before I had any idea what I wanted or what God would do in my life or what passion for writing would eventually bubble up in me.

In the Spring of 2020 during the peak of COVID, I decided to refurbish my desk. It had become yellow and dingy with spots of red peeking through from never having sanded or primed it and I hated even looking at it. So in solitude like we all were, I borrowed a sander and got to work. After a few weeks, and just in time to quit my job to become a full-time writer, I completed the project and my desk was like brand new.

I realized through that experience how much God can speak to us when we get real quiet with some sand paper and a piece of furniture.

Over the next several months, I sat exclusively at my desk day in and day out, writing, planning, reading, and creating. It was one of the richest, most fulfilling and beautiful seasons of my life where I got to live out my dream of being a writer for a living.

Three years have now gone by, and I’m married, and I’m having a baby. Life looks so different than it did back then. It’s even more rich and beautiful than I could have ever imagined, and having this baby is undoubtedly the dream I never knew I had. In a twist of only God-like proportions, becoming a mom and taking care of my family and my home is what I’ll do full-time. The unbelievable privilege of that is not lost on me; I am deeply grateful and humbled for what the Lord has given me.

But we don’t have the space to keep my desk anymore. And even if we did, I realized it was time to let it go.

You see, this desk is more than just the place where I would come to meet with Jesus. It’s more than the revelations he gave me and the tears I shed while writing. This desk means a lot to me for those reasons, but it also represents who I am and have been as a writer; it’s held a lot of my identity in the past almost ten years.

In selling this desk, I’m letting more than just the fond and deeply meaningful memories go.

In selling this desk, I feel I am being challenged by the Lord to ask myself,

“Do I trust God enough to let him have every part of me?”

“Do I believe that he really is good enough to make in me something better than I could even imagine?”

“Do I know that what he has for me is better, more refining, more challenging, and more beautiful than anything I could hand-pick myself?”

I realized it’s not just that this desk means a lot to me.

It’s that Jesus is asking a lot of me.

He’s asking me to let go of the identity and pride I had as a writer, creator, and entrepreneur.

He’s asking me to trust him with my heart, my future, and my dreams as he makes me a mom.

With tears streaming down my face like they have so many times before while sitting at this desk,

I say, “yes.”

So I trade in this desk for a crib, and a rocking chair, and a changing table. I trade long hours at this desk for long hours holding my baby. Late nights and wee mornings once spent researching and writing will soon be spent nursing and burping and changing dirty diapers.

I trade it knowing that I’m not giving up Tiffany the Writer to be Tiffany the Mom, only that now I’m both, and I need to hold on to that tension. And I need to say goodbye to this desk, if only to make room for the newness of life that’s to come both in this baby, and in my heart as a writer.

Through this experience of selling my desk, I’ve learned that in every season God reaches out his hand and asks us if we’ll take it. He is constantly inviting us to trust him more.

But in order to take his hand, we have to let go of what we’re holding onto so tightly.

I don’t know what’s to come or what God will make of me.

All I know is that I can’t wait to be a mom and hold my baby.

All I know is that I sold my desk, I took a step of faith, and I decided to trust Jesus more.