Suitcases

When I pack for a trip, I pay less attention to organization and more to volume--that is, fitting as much stuff as is humanly possible in my suitcase. As a result, I often cannot find the thing I'm looking for when I arrive at my destination. I make sure to pack for every possible situation short of extraterrestrial abduction, but I end up unprepared because I don't put everything in a place where I can find it.

What's more, I'm usually too lazy to pack it all back up every day, which means that my clothes end up all over the floor of the room where I'm staying. It just takes too much effort to take all of the junk I've crammed in my suitcase and repack it once I dig it out. My hotel room ends up looking like a fashion excavation site. Red tape is needed. Some of you are cringing right now and thinking to yourselves, "I will NEVER travel with her!" I don't blame you. As Paul would say, your condemnation is just.

The fact is, as a traveler, I usually think I'm overprepared because I've packed everything I can think of, but I end up unable to use the helpful things I've brought because I've packed them up with a bunch of useless junk. I'm confused and frazzled because I haven't taken the time to organize my suitcase.

I wonder if my heart doesn't look the same way.

I'm a passionate person with a wild imagination. God made me that way on purpose. He made no mistake and no second guesses. But that also means that my mind and heart can run away with me. Rabbit trails of thought entangle with fleshly emotions to create a monster. Most of the thoughts are worries or daydreams. They center on the future--an alternate reality future of worst case scenarios and crazy fantasy plot lines at the same time. These thoughts burrow deep into my heart, creating moods that are just off the wall, kitten-with-a-string excited or soul-crushingly anxious. My mind manipulates my emotions until both look like my overflowing suitcase, bursting with wrinkled thoughts and feelings that I think I need. In reality, they're just a tripping hazard or distraction at best. At worst, they're destructive to my relationships with others because they are spilling out into their lives, and they are burying the things I really need.

Worries, daydreams, and over packing have one thing in common: they are all born of a desire for control.

I know I don't have to tell you that basically none of the things I worry or dream about have ever actually happened. That's a lot of brain energy to waste. Yet I continue to think of them over and over because, for some crazy reason, it makes me feel like thinking about them somehow gives me control. And desire for control is just fear; and fear is distrust of God. The whole thing is a cycle of selfishness.

"Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony" (Colossians 3:12-14).

It's really not that complicated. But sometimes I can't find these things to put them on because they're buried under a pile of selfishness.

Earlier this week, while I was driving, the Holy Spirit abruptly but very gently told me that I am very selfish in my thoughts. I like to retreat to a kind of enchanted Willy Wonka chocolate factory in my thoughts and emotions, a place where I am in charge. This place is especially appetizing when I feel like I've failed or haven't met some (imaginary) standard I've created for myself. This place is all about me because it nurses my wounded pride and doesn't allow my thoughts to center on anyone but me--not the people around me, certainly, and definitely not the Lord.

Jesus gave us one command, y'all. ONE: "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you" (John 15:12).

And again, 1 John reiterates: "Beloved, I am writing to you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says he is in the light but hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling" (2:7-10).

There's no stumbling for a guy like that because his stuff is picked up off the floor.

When my thoughts are about me and my future, they're overwhelmingly complex, convoluted, and emotion-inducing. When they're about Jesus, they're often at the same time about selflessness toward others, and they hold for me a respite much sweeter and eternal than the pleasures of the chocolate factory.

If I'm being honest, I haven't often experienced this respite because I'm too worried about cramming all my thoughts in my mind like socks in a suitcase. But today, as I was praying about getting freedom from my mind, I saw a picture of the Lord gently picking up a suitcase...and then dumping it completely out, giving it a good few shakes to get the things wedged in the corners out of there. Ouch.

You're probably thinking about how you pack. One of my friends is the most efficient packer I have ever met. She can roll things up, wedge them in shoes, and basically fit your whole house in a two by two bag. It's amazing. She's like Mary Poppins.

But at the same time, this friend has had problems her life with efficiently overpacking her heart--and then zipping it shut.

Maybe she is free from a lot of that now, but her story reminds me of another way our hearts are like suitcases: when we are through packing them with unnecessary comforts, we close them and fasten them shut. We want to carry around our issues and insecurities, always coming back to baggage claim to pick them up no matter how heavy or ugly they are. We are even proud of how organized we are, how much we can fit in a small space.

And then they explode in our hotel room just like mine always does: overflowing, not with good things, but with distraction, futility, and regret. They affect our relationships with others--the one and only thing Jesus commanded us to protect.

I'm not getting down on myself here, because I know that this is a process. We all have struggled with packing our suitcases wrongly. It's time to simplify and do what Jesus commanded the 72:

"Carry no moneybag, no knapsack, no sandals, and greet no one on the road" (Luke 10:4).

In other words, leave the baggage behind. You don't have time.

It's not easy to let God turn your heart and mind over and dump them out; but it sure makes your journey lighter. And the best thing is, in Jesus, you don't have to struggle to pack all your insecurities into your bag. Instead, He gives you a completely new bag--one big enough to hold Himself. Then He fills it with His love.

And it's ok--it's even His desire, in fact--for that to run over, onto the hotel floor, out into the streets, and into the whole world.

"And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4:19).

That goes for shampoo, underwear, and all the acceptance and love you long to hold in your heart.