I just returned from a week-long trip cross country and I drug 85 lbs of “necessary” luggage with me. It was a trip in which I needed to portray two separate identities, one as an electronic security professional and one as an eternal security clergy member of the Orthodox Church. Both of these careers require me to dress in a certain manner and have a different style of work clothes. When I arrived at the airport, the TSA folks x-rayed and sniffed the suitcases for everyone’s safety. My little carry-on roller was free but my large suitcase cost me a twenty-five dollar fee. I took 85 lbs of baggage with me and returned with more stuff than I took!
Just as the airline charges me for extra baggage, in life there is a cost for maintaining all of my junk. I always seem to drag along with me scars and soreness from the past. It seems as though wherever I go and whatever I do, I am somewhat entangled with my history. My actions and reactions are mostly based upon my learned survival experiences. Even in my marriage I sometimes enter into my combat mode because a memory of hurt or distrust is still embedded in my heart and usually has nothing to do with my wife but, there it is, overreaction! Fight or flight!
Over the years I have been able to be rid of some of my unwanted baggage by means of confession, communion, prayer and forgiveness. But now, a year older and even more snow on my roof I still have a lot more stuff to surrender. I want to be dependent on Jesus but I seem to keep one hand clinging to my carry-on baggage.
As we enter into the Lenten season I ask this question, how much baggage are you dragging around? Why do we find comfort in own pity party? When I was younger and stronger, I never gave it a second thought to the amount of extra weight I was dragging around. But now I am beginning to realize how tiring it is and how much precious time I have been wasting. Remembering wrongs only injures my ability to be about my Father’s business. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall affliction, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?” [Rom. 8:35]
If I continue to choose to limit my understanding of love based upon what I have experienced here on Earth I will be cheating myself of becoming the man God has called me to be. Instead of loving others as Christ does, my choice to treasure and continue to drag the baggage of mine and others sinfulness cripples my salvific attempt to draw near to the One who truly cherishes me. ‘God, be gracious to me the sinner.’ [Lk. 18:13]
Fr. Gabriel Weller 2/5/2017