What do You Carry?

I’ve never been one to carry a purse.  Doing so is girly and while I am a girl, I am not the girly type girl.  Aside from the girly-ness of it, carrying a purse requires a more concentrated memory than I seem to possess most moments of any given day – if you take your purse in with you, you have to remember to take it out with you. Yeah, I’m not so good at that second part. So, the bottom line is I don’t like to carry a purse. 

While the personal choice not to carry a purse is not an earth shattering one, it does tend to create some issues as far as what to do with the stuff I need on any given day. Now, I’m not one that needs all the bells and whistles so to type.  In fact, I’m not really sure what most women carry in their purse to make it a necessity. I’m usually good with my wallet and my camera, but there are tymes that I find I need other things like the case for my glasses or a granola bar or a pack of gum. Then there are tymes that I decide I should carry my Leatherman or a pocketknife, because you never know when either, or both, will come in handy – and really, tools just are cool.

Of course what I have to carry also depends on where I’m going, how long I’ll be gone and the activities I’ll be doing while I’m there. All of these variables seem to advocate for the carrying of a purse, but still, I don’t care to carry one.

Over the years this battle of “need to/don’t want to” has been a trying one, but recently I’ve discovered something that really helps my struggle rather well: cargo shorts!  It’s amazing what you can carry, store and fit in the pockets in cargo shorts.  They can store any and everything I need to take with me on pretty much any outing. They can hold my wallet when I have to go, yes, have to go shopping – I’m not a fan of the process.  Cargo shorts can hold my camera wherever I go, because you never know when you going to cross paths with “the perfect” shot. They can even hold a rather large bottle of water when on a hike. Bottom line, cargo pants eliminate my need for a purse.

The other day my aunt came to town and wanted to go to a few local stores and shop around. Ha, the things I do for family.  As we walked around the farmers market I started to feel weighed down.  Then I realized my “purse” was rather full. My wallet, car keys, camera, glasses case, foundation compact, Leatherman, and cell phone all filled my pockets and added considerable weight for me to carry around and frankly made me feel the need to constantly pull my shorts back into a comfortable position.

When I got home that evening I went to get ready for bed and when I changed into my cotton shorts and tank I couldn’t believe the weight that was lifted from me.  At that moment it occurred to me that it isn’t just the physical weight that we tend to carry around with us every day.  What about the pockets of our emotional cargo shorts?  What do we put in to those?  Pain from relationships, harsh words, failed endeavors, depression, feelings of worthlessness and an array of other negative thoughts and emotions can all fill our poignant pockets to capacity and add to the weight of our emotional baggage.

What would it be like if we if we changed out of those emotional cargo shorts and stopped carrying around all the heavy pain and negativity?  I have a feeling that our hearts and minds would be a lot lighter and it’s likely there’d be a renewed spring in our step.  Of course having the idea to change and actually accomplishing it are two different things.  While it’s easy to fill my tangible cargo pockets with the things I need, it’s difficult to keep my emotional cargo pockets empty of the things I think I need, but really don’t. 

I don’t need to hold on to the mean words said to me, but yet I tuck them away so I can pull them out later and feel bad again. I don’t need to keep the feelings of a relationship gone wrong, but still I hang on to them so I can relive the pain later.  I don’t need to remember the bad things that happened that make me feel sad or ashamed or disheartened, but still I pocket them away for future pain.

If you think about it, the only thing we really need to carry around with us takes up no room at all, yet fills us completely; weighs nothing yet bears the weight of all our burdens, sorrows and sins; Jesus Christ.  When we fill our hearts with Jesus, there’s no room for the things we don’t need to carry around.

So if you’re like me and feeling weighed down by the things that don’t matter, let’s try to clean out our emotional cargo pockets and give the contents to the Savior.  It might be a process we have to repeat often for a while, but I think eventually we’ll find that we stop hoarding the bad stuff and start keeping only the things we need like mercy, grace joy.