Have you ever thought about trying to unpack a life suitcase of trauma in your personal history? So brave to start opening the hidden buried compartments, so many just never want to do that, never will. Others can never close the old wounds that just won’t heal or go away. But in a desire to at least explain where we are in life, and attribute these weighted experiences to life-long pain and shame, we often are found on the airport floor opening up a mess of a suitcase and trying to close it again. Tough.
Maybe no one died in these life experiences, but we still hold onto the trauma. Often the past has been blocking development of the future fully – and this is currently cramping our style – or the continuous carrying of these memories is costing extra to have the excess suitcase weight. Heavy stuff. Then how best to shed the dread?
Others can help, but don’t always know what they are looking at. Yet outside sight is clearer for big picture reflection and reframing – and that is not always done without the blaming. We don’t have to unpack alone, but remember not everyone involved in your circle of circumstances wants to unpack their own suitcases simultaneously with you unpacking yours. Might never happen and perhaps it’s not presented easily to you for processing… and you can’t force open any suitcase without breaking the lock or the handle, a mess might never be whole again. If you can’t put together a wholeness from pieces (laundry or life), then perhaps that outfit won’t ever be made again. You can’t live your life trying on old pasts. We must move forward.
Also, lo and behold, like dirty laundry, once you start the wash, you have to finish the job, you’ve got to lift the heaviness to the dryer. It can’t just sit and get more moldy on top of heavy. Fabric of life softener will but be careful if it just covers up rather than cleans. Wash and rewash. Lighten the load.
Might want to replace rather than repack the same old stuff. Lighten the load.
Eventually our hidden laundry of life might get threadbare and see-through and better given up to be a rag that is tossed. Lighten the load.
Best to toss outdated and expired toiletries or medicines and refresh yourself for new adventures. Lighten the load.
You can’t carry around souvenir treats that go bad either. Enjoy in the moment then be done. Lighten the load.
Perhaps the best unpacking is done with an eye to forgiveness – the survival in an angry-packed world is not easy but is doable if you forgive more and linger less. How? with a forgiving peace.
Forgive to forge forward. Forgiveness is the only way. It might be the best part of your day. Then Walk away – the Load is Lightened.
Amen
But as for you, brethren, do not grow weary in doing good. 2nd Thessalonians 3:13
“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” from Isaiah 43:18-19
Debbie Upper 