I looked up at my husband and asked, “Can we really live this way?” He just pulled me close. We were standing beside the tiny house we’d found on craigslist.

Moments later we shook hands with the owner, bought the weird little thing and began our tiny-house adventure. I thought we were just moving into a micro home and downsizing our stuff. I didn’t expect it to become a spiritual pilgrimage.

When I was a kid, my parents took me to a campground gathering of Mennonites. As the sun set, everyone gathered for a meal followed by singing and a sermon.

The evangelist Myron Augsburger preached. I was about 9 years old, but the way he spoke kept my attention.

He read Deuteronomy 3:11, about Og, king of Bashan. It says Og had an iron bed. That’s about all we know about him — other than that he was really tall (judging from the size of his bed: 9 cubits long and 4 cubits wide) and that the Israelites killed him in battle (Numbers 21:33-35).

The air was full of wild night noises. The fire was burning brightly. The crowd had gathered in close, and Augsburger paced and preached.

Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. But Og had an iron bed.

Moses parted the Red Sea so a band of escaped slaves could walk through on dry ground. Og had an iron bed.

Gideon led 300 men into battle against a vast army of Midianites, winning a resounding victory. But Og had an iron bed.

Esther went to her king and explained Haman’s plot to kill all the Jews and rescued her people. Og had an iron bed.

Augsburger paced and preached, telling of the heroes of the faith — and contrasting each of them with Og and his bed. Og was the guy who got his name in the Bible because of a weird thing he happened to own.

I was just a kid, but I knew the difference between owning some cool thing and making a difference in the world.

Some 40 years later, I’m still thinking about King Og’s bed and Myron Augsburger’s pacing and preaching.

I had left behind the big house on the golf course and sold the business that had me overcommitted and overstressed. We had a yard sale and donated truckloads of stuff and gave things to friends.

With every load leaving my life, I felt freer. I didn’t have to care for all that stuff anymore. I didn’t have to pay a mortgage on space to store it all. We had a tiny house, a paid-for truck and a vintage car, and we were free.

The spiritual aspect of living simply came by surprise. I realized that I was a very materialistic person. I simply hadn’t been aware of it before. I started to realize how important it was to me to obey the demands of culture (including church culture) to consume and conform.

But we had chosen a very different life. We were losing stuff but gaining freedom and contentment. We were redefining wealth as a life with fewer things but more time and mental space for the things we felt called to do.

I went back to writing. My first book took shape at our kitchen table as an assortment of birds put on a grand show at our feeders outside the window. I watched them as I wrestled with words and ideas. For years I had felt a call to write but been frustrated, unable to begin because my life was full to the brim, mostly with things that didn’t genuinely matter to me.

In the space that opened as we downsized our home and schedule, the words began to flow. My book, The Simplicity Mindset, is due out this month. That wouldn’t have been possible if I were still living in the big house working multiple jobs to pay for the big life.

Once I thought you were supposed to get an education and a job and get married, and I did.

I thought you were supposed to live in the biggest house you could afford and drive the nicest car you could afford, and I had.

I thought you were supposed to have kids and maybe some pets, and on and on.

As an obedient Mennonite girl, I had done everything expected of me.

So why was I miserable?

I’m not sure there is just one answer. But one of the answers is because conformity — even conformity to church culture — and materialism don’t bring contentment. Materialism is based in the shame that I am not enough, so I need to buy the thing that will make me feel like I am.

That’s not a recipe for contentment. But this is: “Do not be conformed to this [shame-based, materialistic] world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God — what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2).

Living simply made it possible to follow my calling as a writer — a call I had been unable to answer when I was busy conforming to cultural expectations.

Living simply gave us freedom. When my mom was in hospice care for two years, I was able to be with her in her final months. The simplest things meant a lot to her, like when I would peel and cut an apple into slices.

I held Mom’s hand as she sat quietly, and I thought I was doing it for her. But it was also a gift to me. The freedom to be present at the end of her life was one of the great gifts of my life.

Minimalists talk about collecting memories rather than things, and there is something to that. My husband and I are both collectors (hoarders?) — I of yarn and textiles, he of antique automobiles. Minimalism doesn’t come naturally to us.

Small-house minimalism has helped us stock our lives according to our sense of calling. It helps that we can’t collect what won’t fit in our house. Adventures and experiences will always fit, and we are richer for them.

But I think minimalism for Mennonites is more than that. Minimizing the mundane — our figurative iron beds — makes room for deepening faith, ministry and meaning-making.

A return to simplicity as Mennonites could revive our generosity, open doors to contemplation and contentment and reconnect us to our heritage.

The heroes of our faith knew the difference between collecting stuff and walking with God. Og had an iron bed, which must have been a symbol of wealth. If that’s all he had, he was poor indeed.

Carmen Shenk of Staunton, Va., attends Waynesboro Mennonite Church and is a student at Eastern Mennonite Seminary. She is the author of Kitchen Simplicity and a new book, The Simplicity Mindset. Her husband, Xaver Wilhelmy, is a pipe organ builder and inventor and restores antique cars.