Bag Lady You Gon’ Hurt Your Back…

Last week I had to go to NYC for work. It was a short overnight trip so I packed my smallest rolling suitcase. I thought I did a good packing job considering that I have the tendency to overpack.

I made sure I had clothes for my morning workout, an extra set of clothes and shoes just in case, pjs and my cosmetics. I even ditched my purse by adding my wallet to my computer bag. I thought I was super streamlined.

I’m sure ya’ll know that traffic in NYC is brutally unbearable so we walked everywhere we went on the trip. In fact, my manager and I walked over 2 miles to meet our coworkers for dinner the night we arrived.

The next morning, I was heading to the airport straight from a meeting so I had to take my suitcase with me. I didn’t even blink at the thought of walking to the office which was a little over a mile away from our hotel. Especially since walking would get us there faster than calling a Lyft/Uber and navigating traffic.

I should mention here that although NYC wasn’t as hot as the 97 degree Atlanta I left, it was still in the high 80s and super humid.

As we started walking I was good. We stopped early in our trek to grab breakfast to-go. Which meant that I added another bag on top of my rolling suitcase and computer bag.

I managed to keep it all secured but about midway through the trip, it started to get rough. There were a lot of people making their way to work that I had to navigate through. The sidewalks and streets were bumpy and I’m guessing that the manufacturer of my suitcase didn’t exactly have walking a mile in the middle of NYC in mind when they built it.

I kept having to reshuffle the computer bag, my breakfast and the suitcase. But no matter how much shuffling I did, walking with all of my awkward baggage for such a long time was tiresome. My mind kept wandering to, “are we there yet?” and “I’m not sure I can do this much longer” and “my arm hurts!”

Then two things dawned on me:

Going to hell is clearly not an option if I can’t stand this type of heat.

and

Dragging this baggage through America’s busiest city was a life metaphor.

I had zero problems walking the city the night before. But with the added baggage the next day, I was a self-doubting, scattered, problem-focused, exhausted, sweaty mess.

Interestingly enough, a few weeks earlier, I had committed to really doing some healing work on myself. I realized that I couldn’t elevate to where God wanted to take me without shedding the grief of past hurts and mistakes. I had to truly heal.

God knew exactly what he was doing as I dragged those bags through the city. It was confirmation that I needed the healing work I had committed to. Affirmation that I had to let go of the baggage I had been carrying around for so long.

He confirmed right then that I had to let go to grow.

I share this story because I know someone needed to hear it. That load you’ve been dragging around from childhood trauma, life’s hurts, let downs, and mistakes is too heavy.

Let it go, let it go, let it go, let it go.