Baggage

I’m standing in a calm corner of a busy airport baggage claim.
The normal hustle and commotion seem to cause the floor beneath my feet to vibrate.
I am alone.

A bell sounds, a light flashes and the conveyor begins to move.

My grandma told me to tie a yellow ribbon to my bag to help me find it in the sea of identical bags that will soon come down the conveyor belt.

Each bag has a yellow ribbon, tied neatly onto the handle.

This is all my baggage.
I am alone.

There were no other passengers on this flight.

This is where I come to claim my baggage.

I begin looking at the address tags labeled childhood, loss, anger, bitterness, joy, fractured friendships, love, broken promises, lies, God.

Wait!
Why is God in a suitcase?
How did he get there?
Who put God in a suitcase?
I did.
I am alone.

In the last ten years, after many disappointments I began to try to find a way to cope.

I have witnessed a splintering divorce, my own failures when attempting college, met the love of my life, fought to tread water and keep afloat, married the love of my life, stood by my 25 year old love as he fought and won his fight with cancer, and become the mother of our precious son and bloomed into the family core I had always dreamed of. I have also made and lost friendships, tried to navigate a slippery and cracked relationship with my parents and siblings, stood by as three of my beloved grandparents went on to Heaven and have tried to bury my head and heart as I am losing another to dementia.

I have accumulated a lot of baggage.


I wish I had known that putting God in the suitcase would just magnify my frustration.

I am working on me. I am working on me so that I can be better for my love and our son.

I am not alone. GOD is here. I am breaking the cracks of the walls that I have put up. Somehow in all this period of trying, and failing, to protect myself the only one I held out was GOD. I was unable to protect myself from the hurt and failure. I am unable. HE IS ABLE.

This is not being written to blame any occurrence in my life for the way I feel today. I am writing this to remind myself that all of these events helped to make me who I am, all the good parts, what I like about myself and to help me focus being more of that.

Right now I am struggling with anger.
Right now I am struggling with bitterness from my past.

Right now, God offers me grace.
Right now, I am trying to apply grace to the wounds I am feeling.
God’s Grace describes ‘unmerited forgiveness’. He forgives when we don’t deserve it, probably especially when we don’t deserve it. God’s Grace is invaluable, priceless and if we were to attempt to try to earn it, we’d fail.

I am not writing this because I am living it. I am writing this because I am trying to live it. This is head knowledge for me and not heart knowledge.