Packing Light: Thoughts on Living Life with Less Baggage

What do we do when it doesn’t work out? What do we do when we don’t get what we thought we wanted? We can either choose to feel like it’s the end of the world, or we can choose to decide it’s the beginning.

We just make what seems to be a single isolated decision—“just this once”—not to follow our conviction. We know we should talk to that person, or go home early, or tell the truth when it hurts, but it’s just easier not to. We don’t want to ruffle any feathers or make anyone upset. We don’t want to step out of our comfort zone. But single decisions

realize He knows what I need even more than I do, and He is more generous than I ever imagined. Sometimes He even meets needs I didn’t know I had.

He was here, He was available, He was pursuing me.

You have to leave home to go on a journey, but you can’t leave home without having a home.

How much more in tune would we be with the twists and turns of our journey, and prepared to handle them with conviction and grace, if we didn’t think the “rules” were protecting us? We would have to pay close attention, exercise discernment, ask people to help. We’d have to let go of some rules that everyone else was following, and follow some that

with. Then, when disappointments come, don’t assume you did the wrong thing. You didn’t. Don’t ask yourself how you could have avoided it, even if you see an obvious answer. Avoiding pain is not the point. Ask yourself who you’re becoming. Because at the end of it all you’ll have thrills, and you’ll have disappointments, no matter which route you t

As long as you’re a spectator in your life, you’re not a worshiper of God. You can be an obedient spectator, but not a worshiping spectator.

This is the irony with needs. We all have them, but we generally don’t discover them until we go without for a while. We discover what we need when we live without things. This is part of the value of traveling and packing light as we travel. Sometimes it’s good for us to need things and not have them.