What do we carry?
This past weekend I picked up the new Snow Patrol album. Overall I really enjoy it, but the first song is definitely my favorite. There is a line in there… “the fire, the fire: you can only take what you can carry.”
That really got me thinking. I remember in high school, a good ice-breaker question was always “if your house was on fire and you could only save 3 things, what would they be and why?" And it was always tough to imagine the 3 things you would carry out with you if you had to. It seems each person always picked their pet, their Bible (at church functions it would have to be a Bible, hello!!), and then girls picked photo albums and guys picked their baseball card collection (or something equally sexist-ha!).
The other night I was dealing with a lot of the crap I carry around with me, things that clutter up my mind. A key word in that sentence is the word ‘choose’: because I am NOT victim to these things…the truth is that I choose them. We all make choices on what to carry with us.
We can choose to carry fear. We can choose anxiety. We can choose to believe and accept lies, or we can choose to accept and believe truth. We can choose peace. We can choose community. Or we can choose to believe we’ll never be lovable and thus choose to hold people at a distance and therefore be alone. We can choose to fully live, or we can choose to crowd out life with the weight of this world. We can choose bitterness, or forgiveness. Hate or reconciliation. Emptiness or fullness. Being broken, or being whole.
You can only take what you can carry.
What are you carrying that you need to let go of? Hurt from that one person in the past. The bitterness of dreams that have been left behind or steered away from. The belief that you can never be whole. The fear of letting go of the crutch of that belief you can never be whole. Fear of being known. Fear of being unknown.
Be gentle to yourself. Don’t carry more than you can handle. Don’t carry things that will weigh you down and clutter you unnecessarily. Instead, carry the things that bring you life. The memory of your child’s first word. Your first date with the one you love. Your best friends’ jokes that always make you cry from laughing so hard. The truth, that God loves you and wants you to love this world and all of his people.
That really got me thinking. I remember in high school, a good ice-breaker question was always “if your house was on fire and you could only save 3 things, what would they be and why?" And it was always tough to imagine the 3 things you would carry out with you if you had to. It seems each person always picked their pet, their Bible (at church functions it would have to be a Bible, hello!!), and then girls picked photo albums and guys picked their baseball card collection (or something equally sexist-ha!).
The other night I was dealing with a lot of the crap I carry around with me, things that clutter up my mind. A key word in that sentence is the word ‘choose’: because I am NOT victim to these things…the truth is that I choose them. We all make choices on what to carry with us.
We can choose to carry fear. We can choose anxiety. We can choose to believe and accept lies, or we can choose to accept and believe truth. We can choose peace. We can choose community. Or we can choose to believe we’ll never be lovable and thus choose to hold people at a distance and therefore be alone. We can choose to fully live, or we can choose to crowd out life with the weight of this world. We can choose bitterness, or forgiveness. Hate or reconciliation. Emptiness or fullness. Being broken, or being whole.
You can only take what you can carry.
What are you carrying that you need to let go of? Hurt from that one person in the past. The bitterness of dreams that have been left behind or steered away from. The belief that you can never be whole. The fear of letting go of the crutch of that belief you can never be whole. Fear of being known. Fear of being unknown.
Be gentle to yourself. Don’t carry more than you can handle. Don’t carry things that will weigh you down and clutter you unnecessarily. Instead, carry the things that bring you life. The memory of your child’s first word. Your first date with the one you love. Your best friends’ jokes that always make you cry from laughing so hard. The truth, that God loves you and wants you to love this world and all of his people.
posted by Melinda @ 8:53 AM
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