Travel today can be quite expensive, in specific if we are checking bags. When checking in and printing boarding passes it is typically the question we are asked; ” Are you checking any baggage?”.

Many of us have figured out a way to travel with less things enabling us to “carry on”! This frees up time, saves us money and helps us to avoid the entire possibility of the airlines losing our luggage!

But in order for us to do this, we had to have taken the time to evaluate what things we really need to make the journey; what are the necessities and leave the access things behind! If we continue to just stuff things into our bags without any care of the weight or size of bags we will be toting, it is surely to costs us a pretty penny!

Maybe there is a lesson we can learn from the airlines when it comes to charging us to handle our baggage. Carrying baggage has a costs; and someone is going to pay for it!

Well today I am not talking about physical baggage at the airport but rather the luggage of our lives; the emotional baggage every single one of us possesses whether we want to believe it or not. We all have had incidents in our lives that have fostered an emotion, a memory, an opinion or a habit. We take these past experiences with us into every area of our lives; our marriages, our relationships, our jobs, EVERYTHING! Many of us never really focus on our own baggage but rather the baggage of those in our lives. For one, it’s much easier to identify the baggage others are carrying. Secondly, its much lighter because they are the ones having to carry it; that is until you commit to a relationship with that person. Then guess what? In some way this baggage becomes yours! In what way you ask? Well this baggage, if not handled with care, will surely begin to bare some form of weight on your life!

I know for me and my wife, we both entered into our relationships totally naive to the realization that each other had issues. It wasn’t long after being married that I definitely saw that my wife was carrying some baggage. Some she had shared with me; others she herself was not even aware of. And as for me, call it total denial that I even had baggage. At best, I was traveling with a fanny pack! lol

But the reality is that everyone has baggage! No one is excluded! Our first mistake is to deny it all together. Our second mistake is to think that our baggage is completely harmless; that its not even worth opening up and looking at! I learned this the hard way!

When the baggage of both my wife and my past actually became real for us; something we realized we had to deal with or else it would be the end of us, it scared the hell out of us both! Once we opened it up and spread the mess out all over the bed, it was almost overwhelming! Could we handle all this mess? Could it be cleaned up? Would each of us have the strength and courage to let go of some things we didn’t really need, especially those things that were damaging to our relationship? I thank our Heavenly Father for giving us the strength and wisdom to do so.

It saddens me today to see so many people rush into marriage and relationship without inspecting their “luggage”! A life long relationship is worth investing the time to inspect these bags. And although we probably won’t even be close to going through and dealing with all the crap we have tossed in along the way, we should be honest enough to share with our future spouse the fact that we are carrying baggage, allowing them to peek in. At least they are more aware of what they are getting into before they state those ever important words “Till death do us part.” They may decide its too much to carry! But better now then later.

Divorce is becoming more and more common and I have come to believe that one of the main reasons is no one checks their bags before entering into this life long journey together. If things get tough, our shoulders and backs get tired of carrying all the extra weight, we set it down, call it quits and move on! Sadly enough, we rush right back into the next relationship carrying the same bags never realizing that the weight actually dragging us down is our OWN baggage; baggage we haven’t taken the time to sort through. I heard a quote that I loved that said “If you carry the bricks of your old relationships into the new one, you will build the same house!” So True! We can’t expect things to be different just because we jumped on a different plane; our baggage is still our baggage!

I am truly blessed in that I know I have found my soul mate; someone that is willing, as I am, to help each other unpack their individual suitcases; to take the time to sort out the mess, discard and deal with those things that are not needed and to repack, together, using one suitcase! We work together to determine what is important in going forward and folding them as neatly as possible place them into OUR luggage. We have come to the understanding that this journey together will be a lot less stressful and demanding on us if we pack together!

Realize that it is ok to have baggage; we all do! What is not alright is to ignore it, expect someone else to carry it and when they get tired, excuse them and hand it over to the next person to carry. We all have our own luggage to tote; our own crosses to bear. If we are blessed enough to find that special person to assist us, then let us not take them for granted. Better yet, offer to carry it for them! It will make you stronger in the end! It will always be less costly to pack a bag together. But regardless, step one is to check YOUR OWN baggage! 🙂