by Kristin Chessrown
Kristin Chessrown is a young lady with a laser target focus on being who God has created her to be. She does not settle, will not bend to peer pressure while loving every person she comes in contact with. She has an innate ability to see untapped potential in others while celebrating who they are right this very minute. Kristin knows what it means to experience great loss as well as great intimacy with her loving Heavenly Father. You will be blessed by hearing her heart today.
I don’t know what it is exactly about packing… but it always makes me emotional.
(yea yea, I’m an enneagram four…I get it..)
Seriously though…
For vacation? Anything from a weekend trip to a two-month expedition in Asia, and I’m likely going to pull an all-nighter making sure that everything is “just so” and that I didn’t miss a single thing that I might need if something outrageously unexpected happens… and the anxiety of the impending travel process and all of the what-ifs of being away from my home base makes me all introspective and reminiscent of how much I used to love a good adventure…I leave my bedroom looking like a tornado came and went and left only the things she couldn’t find an excuse to bring.
Moving is a whole other level… I’m practically catatonic. It should be simple, pick up things, put things in a box, pick up the box, move the box to a new place, put the box down, unpack the box.
done… but it’s not that simple… because I’m a mess of a person, and I want to have absolutely the bare minimum of stuff, I watch minimalism videos on YouTube when I’m feeling stressed because it looks so freeing… but then when push comes to shove… I keep all the stuff!
Sure I might sort some stuff out that I don’t need, put it in a box… put that box in a closet or a garage, but at the end of the day… I don’t get rid of the stuff… Moving reminds me of how much stuff I still have… and it’s overwhelming, I’m drowning in it.
I hate having extra stuff. I’m just so scared of not having this stuff that I never get rid of it.
When the Israelites escaped from their captivity in Egypt, they took with them only things of great value. They left before the bread was ready…
I long for that kind of a rescue story, but the hard truth remains, that no matter how many times God parts the Red Sea for me, I drawback to the same conclusion the Israelites did…
I miss Egypt.
The thing that keeps me from “living my best life” is that I keep holding on to the old one.
I want to keep Egypt in a box in my attic next to the Christmas decorations just in case I want it back someday, but Pharaoh doesn’t have anything new to offer. God wasn’t just calling his people OUT of Egypt, He was calling them INTO the promised land, into the place he prepared for them.
They traded their old stuff for new life (and grumbled a lot along the way) but they left it none the less, and even when they wanted the old stuff back, God kept urging them forward and eventually … they found freedom in that desert. They forgot how good slavery looks through that Instagram filter and they walked into the place God had called them to.
There is no freedom in holding on to my old stuff.
There is no freedom in holding on to my old life.
There is no freedom in Egypt.
There is no freedom in slavery.
It’s funny. I love the MariKondo Method. I love minimalism … but as trendy as those are these days, it’s really just old news.
Moses did it long before their Netflix specials.
Take the silver, take the livestock, leave the rest.
Don’t give time to the bread, new life is waiting.