Today, I told myself I was going to do some "serious packing." But almost as soon as I had begun, the situation became plain old impossible.
It was a large red suitcase. Large, because I would be spending a long time in a foreign country with no Wal-Mart or Kwik Trip. Red,
to match my personality so that I would be able to find it in a crowd. Already, I had begun packing and condensing my essentials (minus clothing) so that I could see how I was doing on space. So far, so good. Next, came the fun part: rolling up clothing to stuff into vacuum ziploc bags. (There's a certain satisfaction in laying on top of one of those bags and squeezing the air out of them so that the contents are compressed and packed efficiently). Then I did the ol' step on the scale and weigh yourself, step off the scale and grab the suitcase and weigh yourself with the suitcase, and then subtract your weight from yours plus the suitcase. (Need a little laugh? Watch this
comedian's take on weighing boxes for UPS). Everything was going smoothly until I did the math -- I was over the weight limit!
Whoo, aaaah. I took a deep breath. Ok, so the testing and trials didn't just happen in Africa. After weighing the big red suitcase alone, we (my Mom and I) discovered that it weighed 20 lbs. alone! So the next step was to find a smaller suitcase. We hopped in the car right away, and on our way one of the songs on the radio played a song about casting your cares on God. I smiled and pointed it out to my mom. How fitting!
Finally, after hours and several more tries of much re-arranging and even more condensing, we managed to fit all the "necessities" in the allowed amount of luggage and under the weight limit! God is good.
I noticed a quote in the new movie "Jurassic World:" "The key to a happy life is to accept you're never in control." This can be taken a step further in that Jesus is the only one who is ever in control and when we give up our "control" to Him, we find true peace.
"The heart of a man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps."
Proverbs 16:9
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