Let it Go... Finding Freedom
We all have baggage, and anyone who will tell you they don't is a liar. The question then becomes, not do we have baggage, but how many suitcases are we lugging on our journey. Some of us have a tidy, small, overnight bag containing a few immaculately folded, no so fond memories, from our childhood, while others of us have 3 carry ons, and 7 large suitcases to check, all full to the brim, overflowing, with zippers that can not be closed. These suitcases are filled with every kind of emotion from hurt feelings, to rejection, to downright bitterness, and everything in between.
When we started our journey, I believe we all started with the small overnight bag, and when we learn to handle our feelings that is all we really need. The point of that bag is to carry the essentials for the time we need them, to deal with the feelings of one event at a time. The problem comes though when we begin to not deal with what is in our suitcases, either from not knowing how or just refusing to unpack at the end of our trip.
Let's take a trip with Jane... Jane heads out with her immaculately packed overnight bag. She goes to visit a friend who forgot that she was coming to visit and wasn't at home. Jane is distraught. Didn't she know that I was coming? Didn't she write it on her calendar? Am I not that important to her? Jane takes all of her feelings of disappointment, anger, insecurity and hurt, and in haste to get back home shoves them in her overnight bag. When she gets home out of frustration , Jane tosses her overnight bag in the closet and plops down on the couch to feel sorry for herself... because now her fun weekend is ruined and she will have to sit here alone.
A few weeks later Jane heads for a visit to see her parents. She pulls out her overnight bag out of the closet, and takes off never having dealt with the contents from her first trip. She never can please her mother. Everything she does is wrong. Her hair is too long, her clothes are too tight, she is in a dead end job. 2 nights later Jane packs up her feelings of worthlessness, discouragement, and not belonging and heads home. This time, when she gets home, her overnight bag is a little bit heavier as she throws it in the closet and again plops down on the couch but this time with a glass of wine to unwind, while continuing to replay the events of the weekend and sulking about why she's always such a disappointment to her family.
During the Summer, Jane meets a handsome guy and they take off on a beach trip, a few beers too many and Jane is sitting on the curb of a street with a red hand print wrapped around her arm and a black eye, that was "just an accident." Jane picks up her feelings and starts to put them in her overnight bag but she cant shove any more in. She finds a luggage store and buys a small rolling suitcase, and comes back to the curb for her overnight bag . She throws her overnight bag inside, tosses in her feelings of being a piece of property, of victimization, and of distrust in on top, and begins to walk away rolling her suitcase behind her, as her boyfriend is put into handcuffs and driven away in the back of a police car.
This goes on for years as Jane continues to toss her feelings in on top of one another buying new suitcase after new suitcase every time she deals with emotions. Several years later Jane gets married to a nice guy. She opens up her suitcase to put his love in as they are leaving for their honeymoon. Her husband is boarding the plane and Jane is still at the counter making sure that her luggage is marked Fragile. She tries to walk away to join her husband for the red eye flight, but she just doesn't feel safe leaving all of her luggage with the flight crew. She goes back to the counter purchases two extra seats and drags every bit of that luggage onto the plane with her. Her husband standing in awe, wondering why his love is not enough.
Getting off the plane Jane and her husband get into a heated argument about the luggage and the fact that she needs to get rid of it. Jane everything you need you could fit into one small bag. Her husband realized that his love for her had been squashed, buried, and tainted by everything else in the suitcases. He storms off in anger and hurt. With tears in her eyes Jane begins to realize all that her baggage was costing her.
Jane drags her 5 bags down onto the beach through the sand. She has to pull and tug as the wheels on the suitcases kept getting bogged down. The sun was beginning to rise and she was missing its beauty because she kept looking back trying to pull her suitcases through the sand. An older lady was walking on the beach that morning.
"Honey Child, what in God's good name are you doing with all those suitcases out here in the sand?"
"Well Ma'am, I'm here on my honeymoon and my husband is angry with me and I just didn't know what else to do or where else to go."
" Honey, what is so valuable in those suitcases that you have to drag them through the sand, that's a lot of baggage child, shouldn't you be able to carry the love of your husband in one bag?"
"But Ma'am, I never unpacked these bags before, they have been with me everywhere I have gone. I have been through some really terrible stuff in my life and I have to keep these bags with me, and my husband left me stranded in the airport and he didn't even offer to carry my bags, he just doesn't love me, I am worthless, and incapable, and fat, and I don't trust him."
" Now Child, pull out the love for your husband and tell me what it looks like."
Jane set all of her suitcases down and opened up the biggest one. Digging down deep she pulled out her husbands love. It was chipped and stained and wrinkled from being shoved into the suitcase. It was hardly recognizable.
Speaking wisely, the old woman said. "Honey look at that heart, that is something to be cherished and you tossed it in the bottom of that baggage, just like you were throwing it out in the trash. You made a choice not to unpack these bags and deal with your feelings and it has compounded time and time again until everything is tainted. Tell me the truth, aren't all of your relationships and events in your life tainted by the feelings in your past?
At that moment Jane realized how from that very first trip, she had never unpacked her bags or dealt with her feelings. She had allowed one feeling to compound the next. Jane lifted her head to God and asked him to forgive her for carrying around all her hurt, and for being a victim for so long. As the older woman held her hands and prayed silently for her, tears streamed down Jane's cheeks as she asked God to help her forgive the people in her life who had hurt her and failed her. She asked him to release her from carrying all this baggage around with her. As Jane prayed she collapsed to her knees beside her luggage in the sand, and clung to the love of her husband. As she prayed for the Lord to show her how to love her husband in a new light, free from all the baggage she had been carrying, The tide swept in and flooded over her, She felt the power and the pull and the cold water rush around her. As the tide pulled out she looked down at her husbands love that she had clung tight in her arms, it had been cleansed by the tide. She looked up and realized that the bags that she had spent so much energy dragging through the sand were being effortlessly pulled out to sea.
" Don't you feel better child, now that you have released them. God couldn't take them away while you were still clinging on for dear life. But once you took your focus off of your bags and put it on Him, He washed it all away and left you free."
Jane looked up and watched her bags floating away in the tide. She had an opportunity to swim out and retrieve them or watch them float away, but she was captivated by the beauty of the sunrise. After she had stood in awe of the sunrise, she looked around again and realized she was there alone, the older woman had walked away, and the luggage was no where to be seen. She felt peace and freedom she had never felt before.
Baggage can cost us so much in our lives. We really need to learn to release what we can not fix, forgive those who have done us wrong, and not be caught up in bitterness. When we can let go of these things in our lives, and allow the Lord to heal our issues without being compounded by pitty-parties, and insecurities, then we will find true freedom in Him.
