Last year around the infamous Black Friday. As usual I found myself amongst the excited shoppers. And for the record, when I say Black Friday, I mean I will not go out shopping until it is officially Friday. Well anyway, that Friday morning my sister came over for us to go shopping. She insisted on me changing purses so I could have a bag that would serve as better use. She reminded me that my purse needs to be easier for me to carry, as I anticipated to have several shopping bags to carry as well. Maybe because my mind thinks of everything early in the morning, but I thought about her words as the nagging commercial…”What’s in your wallet?”

I took my purse and begin to take out what I did not need. I could not believe all the things I found that I had been carrying around. Unnecessarily might I add. A couple of the things that I found were 2 Anastasia dip brow pots. I thought to myself, Why am I am I carrying around two different ones? Possibly, I didn’t realize that I threw one in, not knowing the another one was already there? Ok fine, but then I even found things like an empty medicine bottle that I had finished weeks before. So apparently I forgot to throw that away too. Pulling out more stuff, I realized that I had things in that purse that I hadn’t even used in months.

I was trippin’ like, why in the world was all of this stuff in here? Then the question dawned on me…How much weight have I been carrying around unnecessarily? I think I just got so used to packing my bags, and putting in so many “just in cases,” that I failed to see that these “just in cases” were weighing me down.

So then I started thinking…
How many times do we carry around things that we don’t need to carry? How many times do we carry around issues that God has offered us to be delivered from? Yet, we hold on to them. And how many times do we carry around people and situations that were straight up unhealthy for us?

Be as it may, we are all human. And like me, some of us have a habit of carrying around unnecessary things. Sad part is most of the time I honestly do not even realize that I am doing it. But it was in that moment that I realized that I need to change some things in my life.

I’m telling you, when I took all that stuff out of my bag, and left only my essentials, my bag was light!!! It was like I barely had anything in it. My shoulders and back were so grateful. I stood there thinking, why didn’t I do this sooner? Clearly I had felt the weight, and clearly the weight had made me sore, yet I did nothing to change it. I had been carrying things so long that it had become normal. It was if my body had become accustomed to carrying weights.

The Bigger the Bag…

In all my observations, I noticed that the bigger my bag, the more crap I tended to put in it. It’s like it becomes bottomless. I guess I can summarize that sometimes the bigger your heart, the more you might tend to carry. I love hard, and when I am hurt, I hurt just as hard.

So my prayer was simple…Lord help me not to hold on to weights. By weights, it could be issues, it could be people, it could be relationships, it could even be the things that didn’t work out for me. Whatever your weight may be, God did not intend for you to carry it. And if you’re one that isn’t sure what the weight is, pray and ask God to show you what it is. Not only show you, but then to also help you to let it go.

A year later, I am still a work in progress. My purse gets weighty sometimes, but I have to remember to clean it out.

Going into this new season, lets make sure our bags are lighter, and that we are not carrying weight around for others as well. Let’s make sure we remember that it isn’t our job to carry weights.

Can’t speak for anybody else, but this year I am wearing my fanny pack. Yep, I said it, and proudly brought my faux leather one from H&M.