I Hate Packing

I feel a little more 'grown-up' as I recently returned home from my first ever business trip! I had the amazing privilege to travel to Washington D.C. to spend a week observing and learning from therapist who work with our Wounded Warriors at one of the best physical therapy clinics in the nation. I cannot even begin to describe what this experience was like, well to be honest, I really can't describe it beyond a small glimpse because of HIPAA and the way many of the extremely unique patients I met are easily identified.What I can tell you is some of the interesting reflections I have about how I handled the trip itself.

I love traveling. I enjoy being in airports; I enjoy the excitement of knowing that everyone around you is going somewhere. I have been somewhat 'grounded' these past two years, concentrating on school and stepping away from the international missions field that I had been involved in for about seven years. It may have been a good thing that I had this break from traveling as I have come to realize that I am really bad at packing.

I hate packing. I always try to travel light, but that means cramming and cutting and sorting.Every time that I pack to go on a trip I almost always take every item back out and double check that I have everything at least twice, sometimes even three times. I constantly worry that I'll forget an essential item and I often bring more than I need. One would think that I should be focusing on where I'm going and what I'll do when I get there instead of worrying about bringing the comforts of home with me. My frustrating struggle made me think of another person who had problems leaving things behind. In the 19th chapter of Genesis we hear the story of Lot and his family's escape from the city of Sodom. Following the warning of the city's destruction and instructions to leave it from angels, the family immediately fled, forced to leave all that they owned behind. They were told to run and never look back, but Lot's wife looked back and turned into a pillar of salt.

I have always wondered why Lot's wife looked back - looked back on the wickedest city in the world, a place that was no match for where she was escaping to. She was given specific instructions to direct her energy looking forward and she chose to focus on what she was leaving behind. The levels of empathy I had for Lot's wife were pretty much nonexistent, and yet I do the exact same thing when I go on a trip. I spend way too much time and concentration packing and try to bring all kinds of unnecessary trinkets with me. It is not that I think I should abandon all need to prepare for a trip, but that I need to quit focusing on the fear of forgetting to bring something.

Of course this applies to small and big trips (even business trips!), but I also think that I applies to our biggest trip of all, our life's journey to heaven. It is so hard to always travel excitedly forward and cut lose our ties to earthly things. Collecting items, pondering arguments of what is valuable; but we'll save that for another blog post.