Baggage. We all have it. Whether it’s physical “stuff” we fill our homes and garages with, or emotional baggage that clutters our minds and reminds us where we come from. We all have a load that we carry with us day by day, and sometimes, it seems like too much to live with. And other times, it covers us like a security blanket. A comfortable, neat little barrier that separates us from the world and from the scary things God might ask us to do. If we ever lost our baggage, we might be exposed for who we really are, and we just can’t have that.
Packing Light – Thoughts on living life with less baggage
Author Allison Vesterfelt had an idea of what her life would look like upon graduating college. Marriage, the perfect house, the perfect job – All of the things the world tell us we should have by the time we’re 30 (or younger). But what she found as graduation came and went was that she was just accumulating baggage. She was grabbing for anything and everything to try and create the life she had always thought she wanted, but was drowning in a pile of clutter and a messy mixture of routine and restlessness.
And then a crazy thing happened. A friend asked her to go on a trip to all 50 states.
It took a lot of coaxing to get Allison on board for this trip. How could she sell her things? How could she leave relationships behind? What about her job? Her city? The life she had been trying to build?
Allison could have never imagined what this trip would mean for her life. When she was forced to sell her things, leave routine and security, and depend heavily on her friend and the Lord, she found that the life she thought she wanted actually wasn’t what she wanted at all. She was exposed, her baggage was striped away, and it was scary. But that’s how God works. He exposes our baggage so that we can leave it behind for the better thing.
In the book Allison writes, “I say all this…to show you how much baggage I was carrying without even realizing it. Baggage is like that. You pick it up one piece at a time, and it grows heavy over time, so you hardly even realize you’re carrying it. And the only way we know we’re holding it is if we go somewhere.”
This book really resonated with me personally because I recently packed up and moved to another state. My husband and I left a lot of “stuff” back in Ohio – Both emotional and physical, some good and some bad. The hardest part was realizing that there were things we just couldn’t take with us, that we were holding on to things we needed to let go of, and that we knew we were going to be exposed.
This is a story about not remaining stationary, but embracing the act of “packing light.” When we pack light, we depend on Him more, we depend on each other more and we realize that life actually is better that way.
This book is Allison’s story, but in reading it you’ll realize that you probably have a trip to take, an exciting story to tell, and a crazy adventure to live as well.
This post was created by our dear friend @AbbyNetti.
