travel light

“You should quit your job. You’re horrible at it,” the man in front of me huffed once more in the direction of the gate agent, picked his large bags off the ground, and boarded the plane. He and his three designer bags, large coat, furrowed brow, and sweaty forehead seemed to leave in a cloud of smoke. He was carrying a lot, but it looked like kindness wasn’t one of those things.

I’d been thinking a lot already today about the things we carry. I arrived at the airport when it wasn’t yet light out, with my two massive suitcases filled with all that I needed to move into a Paris apartment, and clothes for the next few months. I had another overstuffed carryon bag that went on my shoulder, and a pretty heavy backpack. At first, moving through security, it’s doable, you know? Carrying all that. But the longer the day went on, the more gates I had to get to, and terminals I had to enter, the more I regretted bringing my heavyweight companions. 

When I missed my second connection to Philadelphia, tried to get re-routed through Dallas but sat as that flight filled up too, and finally got put on another later flight, meaning that I would have to stay overnight at the airport and get to Paris a day later than planned, it was this man, bogged down by stuff and stress and attitude who took the last seat on my overbooked flight. It’s always the worst when you can’t get where you need to go - but it’s even worse when someone who acts like such a jerk gets there ahead of you. 

It was somewhere in the midst of lugging all my stuff to the three different gates, having to pick up everything in order to go get a water bottle or a coffee, struggling to get out my passport and jacket and books that I heard the whisper - “travel light.” I felt it as I was huffing to my fourth gate of the day, and I stopped in my tracks on one of those flat escalator things. 

Travel light.

And I knew that this wasn’t just being spoken over me and my coordinated, hunchback-causing luggage, but me and my life. Because it is so much harder to get where we need to go when we are traveling with too much to carry. This little travel tip is also a life tip, because when we carry things we don’t need - shame, baggage from the past, hurts, prejudices - it takes us longer to move. And in clinging to those things, we sometimes lay down the things we should be carrying - kindness, joy, patience, courage, boldness, encouragement. These things are light and easy, because they come from the God who says that His burden is easy and yoke is light - so what’s heavy is not His. 

I’ve decided that 2019 will be the year I learn to travel light - both in literal travel and in life travel (am I really going to read three books on the plane and eat those twelve granola bars?). I knew from the start of this year that God was speaking over me to clean out and minimize and cut down on what I own and do and what I feel I need to output. I’ve become really good at being really productive with a really full schedule, which is great - but not if it isn’t coming from a place of rest and grace and easy yoke. Not from a place of needing to carry it all in my own two hands. 

So friends, as I embark on this journey to move to P A R I S (ahhhh), I am going to lean into traveling light. And not just rearrange things in the bag so I can fit more, or make it look like I have it all together - we are masters of that huh? I’ll stop carrying more baggage than just the essentials, so I am freer to love and dance and get where I need to go.  

This is the first in a series of blogs I’ll be writing about my time in Europe! Stay tuned!