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On a Personal Note…Lose the BaggageI was on the second flight of stairs, on the way to my office on the 3rd floor (okay -- so it's not an "office", it's a cubicle), when I realized that I was already getting winded. Now I'm not in the greatest shape, but a 3-story hike shouldn't kill me. Yet when I reached the top of that third flight of stairs, my legs where starting to burn, my back was feeling the strain, and I was completely out of breath. I stopped for a moment and looked down at myself. I had two satchels over my shoulder; one was rather small, maybe one foot square (though it was packed full of notebooks, papers, mail, electronic gadgets, and about 50 pens and pencils), but the other is about the size of a briefcase and was packed full of books, binders, and papers for the class I was taking. On top of the satchels was my lunch cooler, containing not only my food, but also two cans of pop and a cooler pack. I was holding my thermos in one hand and my travel mug in the other. All toll, I was probably hauling 30 or 40 pounds of gear up that 3-story climb. No wonder I was more than a little winded! The ironic thing was that even after that moment of revelation, I continued to haul that gear up and down those stairs for a number of weeks. I guess I thought that it would be good for me; that it would be good exercise and I'd get stronger as the days went by. And perhaps I did, but not much. And it certainly wasn't a good way to improve my strength. The weight was off center; it strained weak muscles and barely used stronger muscle groups. Eventually I had to make a change. I sat down one day and examined the stuff I was carrying around with me. Over half of the items in the small satchel were no longer needed and could be thrown away. Other stuff just needed to be put in the right place and didn't need to be hauled around with me. Still other things were only needed on certain days of the week and there was no value in taking them with me wherever I went. The large satchel didn't need to be carried at all. One of the books or binders might be justified on a certain day, but not the whole stack of stuff! And even in that larger satchel there were lots of things that simply needed to be put away, filed, discarded, or otherwise put to rest. Lent is the time for us to do that with our lives. Look at yourself. What are you carrying with you that's weighing you down? What emotional baggage are you hauling around? Do you really need to carry it all with you everywhere you go? I'll bet that if you look closely, you'll find that much of it is completely unnecessary. It simply needs to be put away, filed, discarded, or otherwise put to rest. The emotional baggage that we carry with us doesn't just affect our hearts and our heads; it can also affect our bodies. Study after study shows how pessimism and negativity really do hinder our immune systems and other processes within our physical bodies. Combined with a true physical ailment, negativity -- our emotional baggage -- can kill us. Lent is a time of preparation. It's a time of suffering, as we ready ourselves for the death of Good Friday and the resurrection of Easter. But if you have been caught up in your suffering, that preparation is a time to get through it and move beyond. Go to confession -- receive the sacrament of Reconciliation. It truly is a second baptism, renewing us -- cleansing us. If you have friends or family members who aren't Catholic, encourage them to speak to their minister or perhaps to your priest. Encourage them to unload their baggage, get rid of their negativity, and improve the quality of their lives. Our lives are not defined by the suffering we endure, but rather by the way in which we handle our suffering -- the way in which we move through it, to the new life beyond. I won't lie to you -- it may be a long journey. So the first thing we need to do is lose the baggage. Peace,
And visit ParishWebmaster.com for hundreds of Catholic articles! 
Copyright 2005 by Brandon Jubar |
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