Enrobed

There are two types of people: those who sell on Facebook Marketplace and those who don’t.

I am the former, but I belong in a special subset of sellers who border on crazy. Since 2020 I’ve sold over 2,000 items (I only know the quantity because I track and tally every sale in a google sheet…like I said, subset). My sales range anywhere from our old leather sectional for $1300 to a wired keyboard for $1—and I got an equal dopamine hit from each. I sold half of my parents’ pre-move belongings from four states away through this miraculous medium. My daughter likes to make fun of me for selling things for $3, but if you sell a thousand of them it’s the opposite of pathetic.

I’ve never felt like I was going to be murdered at a meet up or burgled by a porch pickup. A stranger did spend two hours in our kitchen while we cooked dinner and even ended up watching an episode of Beat Bobby Flay with us while the old dinosaur of a Windows8 PC I sold him for $50 updated at a snail’s pace. (I wiped that thing to factory settings before listing but never powered it back on. He wanted to make sure the webcam worked, so he turned it on and the updates began. And finished two hours later. Painful lesson learned.)

What started casually as a Covid hobby has evolved into a prideful obsession: I haven’t found something I can’t sell. Maybe it’s my photos, maybe it’s my descriptions, but it was a surprise to me I had a hidden talent that warranted clicks—and now I count on results.

The night before my daughter left for her 18-month mission for our church she presented me with a heaping pile of her belongings and said, “Sell these for me.” No problem, Baby Girl. The mini iPad, rose gold Adidas, and Albion jumpsuit disappeared in a day. The jeans, old tees, books, and colored pencils were a little tougher but trickled out of the house. I eventually reduced her mound to one item: an oversized, reversible, knee-length, tan bathrobe in that weird sherpa fabric that looks like matted fur. Could I sell a used, unisex bathrobe in an unfortunate color that made one look like a giant band-aid? Could I?

I did sell a lockbox with no lock to a kid who only wanted a cash drawer for a lemonade stand. I did sell 43 mismatched and slightly used 1” binders to an art teacher for her student portfolios. I’d sold a set of rusty hammers, pliers, and wrenches. I’d sold 6 plastic Ficus trees to a groom for his “medieval wedding”. I’d even sold our old toilet seats. Yes, toilet seats. (We got the nice no-slam ones from Costco, so I listed our old ones for $10. They sold!) I’d sold my pogs collection from the 90s (of course with the slammer), my TI-85 from AP Statistics, all my purple Christmas ornaments, an old fax machine, baby clothes, you name it. There was a market for everything, and my past performance proved there was likewise a buyer for everything.

So I listed that robe with confidence. Crickets. More crickets. I deleted and relisted it week after week so the listing wouldn’t get buried. I repeated that action for three years. (Again, subset.) It was now October 2023 and I was really sick of that massively puffy robe hanging in front of my eyeballs day in and day out, year in and year out. Worse, I was beginning to doubt my superpowers. Tenaciously dedicated to the removal of this garment from my home, yet weary from my never-ending sales task, I had a flash of inspiration late one evening:

Delete your robe listing and relist it as "Luke Skywalker Halloween Costume".

I made Greg model the robe and posted it immediately (with his head cropped off for cyber protection). It sold the next day to rosy newlyweds for $5. As they drove away, my Venmo notification dinged and I just knew I was a genius. I was unstoppable. I was an unstoppable genius!

The literal second after praising myself I had a recollection of something Bishop Matt Thornton taught over the pulpit years prior. “Don’t forget to thank the Lord for your awesome ideas.” (The sincerity and truth to his statement struck me so deeply at the time of his telling I wrote it in my journal.) He was right, and I said a double thank-you prayer for 1) finally selling the robe, and 2) having that a-ha moment that solved my problem.

This is a silly story about a robe, but it’s also a serious story about the character of God. I am noticing more and more how often I get mental alley-oops, and I want it on record that I believe the assists come from a loving Father in Heaven who cares about our successes in this life—even marginal $5 Facebook successes. I appreciate all the help He gives me in my creative processes; I often feel nudged to look and notice, to edit, to stop and do this now.

p.s. I’d like to add that perimenopausal brain fog (I know, I know, are we all sick to death of talking about perimenopause, protein, and boundaries?) is real and causes me to forget important things as I’m thinking them. It’s such a horrible feeling to come up blank for something that was colorful and hefty a moment prior, but now I just say a little prayer to please let me remember what I just forgot if it truly matters to me or others…and it always comes back to me. Hence my companion motto to Bishop Thornton’s: "Don’t forget to thank the Lord for your boomerang memories." They come back! They really come back!