Unpacking

I’ve been out of town every weekend but two since mid-March. This is my first week home since Memorial Day. The week before that I was at the beach. Needless to say, I haven’t unpacked my bags yet. Just enough for a quick wash and reload for the next trip. And now that I have a little time, I don’t know where to start. I know that it’s just unpacking a few bags…but I really don’t know where to start.

It’s been a long week, too. I had a couple of friends share some pretty weighty issues that they are dealing with, that now are weighing a bit heavily on my heart. A few other things in life haven’t gone as well as I would have liked this week. I feel like there is some emotional and spiritual unpacking that needs to happen, too, but – alas – I don’t know where to start with that either.

What I am hoping is that what I do in the physical will transcend to the spiritual. Sort of like when you go through the motions of showing love to someone, you often begin to feel love towards them. Or – whether or not my heart is in it when I start to exercise, and I’m (almost) always glad that I did it when I finish. And maybe, as some of the clutter around my house begins to clear, the clutter in my head will, too.

Unpacking…it’s essential to so many things in life. Putting down roots. Having the ability to focus. Taking inventory of what you have – or what you may have lost along the way. Getting things back in their place. Keeping things in order.

God is not a God of disorder but of peace – so as I begin to unpack from my weeks of travel and settle in to life at home for the foreseeable future, my prayer is to begin to see what intangible things I need to unpack as well. Amen.