I love packing. I love having my clothes organized and neatly folded. Each thing catagorized and put in its own place. It makes me feel accomplished. I just fit ALL those clothes and shoes and hairsupplies and makeup and who knows what else in this one bag and it looks NICE. I get satisfaction in that. I get to the airport feeling confident and pr…epared and I realize that I missed one small detail. You can only have 50lbs per bag. I don’t fit on the plane. I can’t go with all the baggage.
I feel like in life, we all carry baggage. We all carry bulky bags of past hurts and mistakes that, later down the road, hinders us from what we should be doing. We can’t accomplish the things God is calling us to do because of one small detail.

We. Don’t. Fit.

Who doesn’t have baggage? I mean, if we’re completely honest with ourselves we all have have past regrets, past sins and past mistakes that we carry with us everywhere we go. That boyfriend we went too far with, that situation we’re still bitter about, that “thing” that happened to us or that we did that CONSTANTLY plagues our mind. That baggage feels like it ruins every relationship or situation we’ve ever been in and we can’t just seem to get rid of it.
Why do we do this to ourselves? We have a Savior that DIED so we wouldn’t have to carry our burdens, and yet we still refuse to put it down. We refuse to quit lugging around these dusty, disgusting, filled up bags and hold on to them for dear life. We’re afraid to put them down and throw off the baggage that weighs our hearts down, and keeps us from living life to the fullest.
Sooner or later we have to come to a point where we realize that the dealing with past hurts is so much easier than carrying them. The problem with that is that the baggage feels secure. It lets you leave up the walls that seemingly protect you. Throwing off the baggage means tearing down walls, and that equals vulnerability in our minds.

When airlines see that you’ve gone over your weight limit, you have to do one of 2 things. You either lose some of that baggage or you pay more money for an extra checked bag.
What are you willing to pay for your baggage ? Your job, your relationships, your joy? It seems simple enough to answer, but most of the time we end up paying for our bags instead of just getting rid of things inside of them. You don’t want to end up paying for your bags with these things, and suffer that cost just to carry around your past.

We all get to choose what we carry. It’s not easy to drop our bags and tear down those walls but it’s worth it. I hope you choose to fit on the plane by giving things up, rather than paying for them. Then next time it’s easier to pack light, because you’ve already gotten rid of something. You can make it. Sooner or later you’ll be boarding that plane with nothing more than yourself and what you have on you, no checked luggage required. Following Christ requires us to give up all we have and follow him. Drop it right there and go. Let go of the things that are so heavy that they hold you back. Loosen your fingers, stop holding your breath, and unclench your jaw. Stop trying to change the past by holding on to it, and instead embrace the future of what you can do NOW. Stop trying to fix with glue, what God can replace fully new. We deserve more than washable glued pieces that don’t quite fit together anymore.
So decide today, what baggage do you need to give up?