Carrying baggage

The past few years, I have become quite skilled at going through things and weeding out what is unimportant, and keeping only the important things. When we moved from Canada, we only came with a few suitcases of things.  We decided we were not going to ship things. Our furniture had seen its "best before date" come and go and so we decided to get rid of it all except for one piece which we keep at a friends house. Lots of ornaments and souvenirs were either given away or thrown out. Items which had not seen the world other than through a cardboard box for years were discarded. Momentos and family heirlooms were examined and only the best ones were kept.

This was a tough process. Saying good bye to things can be hard- hard because they are filled with memories. Hard because maybe Uncle Joe gave us that or Aunt Wilma wanted us to have something. But sometimes you have to let go. We knew that if we were moving half way around the world, then we had to be ruthless with our discernment. Only the best could stay. Everything else had to go.

I think our memories are like that. There are people who have helped us along the way, who have encouraged us, who have blessed us.  We want to remember those. We also want to remember the lessons that we have learned about helping others and how to be a great neighbour. We want to hold on to these memories as long as we can, because when the way gets tough, it is those wonderful memories that will inspire us with hope.

Human beings also have negative feelings and experiences which hold them back. We hold grudges, we blame a whole group on the basis of the actions of one person, we seperate ourselves from our fellow human beings. We allow these feelings to pollute our relationships with others. I think this is like the usage baggage that we had to get rid of when we came to Australia. We need to let go of our hard feelings, our grudges, our pain and move forward. We need to lighten our emotional loads in order that we can move forward.

Lightening our emotional loads is like trying to discern what items to keep and what items to throw away. Lightening our emotional loads won't be easy. It is hard work to let go. We have to learn to forgive, to forget, to forge new relationships. But when we do so the road forward will be much easier. Blessings.