When I was a little girl my mom made my dad a duffel bag. Money was tight and he traveled a lot, going on different trips, working with camps and students. He would go on campouts and all sorts of what I knew of as adventures. Looking back now, I know that bag wasn’t “fancy” as the standards for bags go. But it was immaculately made and it served its purpose until somewhere along the way, years down the road, it was time for it to be retired. That was the first of many, but I have this weird love of duffel bags. I once got a royal blue diadora bag for Christmas that I used until it literally became shreds. Ghost dad and I purchased a Rawlings leather duffel that I hoarded away from him any chance I got. In recent years, I have grown a deep love for Patagonia’s black hole duffel. I can use it, carry it on my back like a back pack, and when I am done, it folds up inside of itself into a teeny tiny space. It’s so satisfying. And at this point, I am sure anyone who has read this far is wondering why I spent a paragraph rambling about a w bag.
About 8 years ago, I started a “Go” bag for myself. It was a collection of very specific items I wanted to have when I needed to go. Most go bags are to be used in case of emergency and mine is no different. If you look through churches, elementary schools, and businesses, you will in the current day often see a backpack on the back of a door. It can be filled with everything from emergency numbers, water, snacks, flashlights, all the way to door stops to prevent shooters from entering a room, or tourniquets in the unfortunate case that they do. Most go bags were created out of someones unpreparedness in an emergency. Mine is much the same. I know it all in my head, every item that needs to be there. In its earliest days I even had one very specific t-shirt that ghostdad knew always needed to be in there. I always have my stuff ready. I know where it is and if it isn’t in a bag, I know which bag it goes in and where to find it on the fly. My go bag is safe, it is comfort, and it is calming when I don’t always feel calm. And Saturday it wasn’t there. Like so many other times, we had what is a standard Stratton family emergency occur, and I didnt have my go bag. And yet I still had to go. Pick up, load up, get to the hospital, sit through triage while we got Teags stable, wait for an open bed and the plan. No go bag. I knew I needed it, but how was I going to get it? Ghostdad was taking care of the other three, and I didn’t know where my bag, where my stuff or where anything was, and I couldn’t leave. And then Tudy called. My freckle faced, strawberry headed daughter called to check in. She has lived this scenario a dozen times over. She has walked it. I hate some days she has to walk it, but I knew this time she was ready to walk it in a new way. So I asked her to pack my go bag. She pulled out all the things I needed, calmly, graciously, with speed, and then she found my duffel. My duffel that is supposed to be my fun duffel, became my go bag that day. Then a friend drove it to the hospital. And as we stood there in the ER parking lot, I thanked her and she said, “I am a doer and this is what I can do.”
Over the years what is in my go bag has changed. It has become less and more basic, but its purpose has remained. Which got me thinking about how much I hate that someone had to bring me my “Go” bag. I have worked as an adult to build good healthy friendships. But I fought for years to keep those friendships separate from my chaos. My crazy was my own and those were supposed to be my “fun” friendships. The sweet spaces where my chaos didn’t exist. But the truth is, it doesn’t work that way. As humans we were designed for connection. So much so that you see people staying involved in unhealthy human relationships, out of fear of losing that human connection. I have learned how to avoid relationships that culturally we call toxic. But what it has taken me years to learn is how to accept my “go” friends. How to let those “fun” relationships be there when I have to go. How to let them be used as a calm, a comfort, and a voice of reason amidst my chaos. I long to do that for others, in a healthy way of course, but why is it so hard to let others do that for me? Because to let those in, in that way, is to acknowledge in all its fullness the part of life that is the hardest, but most important. Pain. It hurt my heart to have my 12 year old pack my go bag for me. I don’t want that to be something she has to do, but I also know for her it was showing grace in pain. It was an acknowledgment of a reality, and a step forward in surrender.
Pain is one of the best and worst parts of this life. With pain, we see the fullness of joy and with pain, we also experience the fullness of sorrow. It is the thing we want to hide ourselves the most from and yet we feel the deepness of life with it, both physically, spiritually, and emotionally. Pain is one emotion that no one escapes. And when it comes, we get a choice on what to do with it. Do we run, or do we add to our go bag? Do we choose to take those moments that often feel so heavy and unfair and let them be the pieces we take hold of and surrender to? Let ourselves grow in ways we couldn’t otherwise? When I pass my go bag sitting in the corner of my bedroom I often pause, wishing it wasn’t there. And yet even in the worst of moments, I know the Lord has used those moments to grow me, and my children, in ways I could have never foreseen. Right or wrong, I know the same God that grows me through my pain, loves me and is there when I can not bear under the weight of it. He never expected me to. It’s why it says in 2 Corinthians, “My Power is made perfect in weakness.” In my worst and most painful moments is when I have seen God move through situations. Through those Go people. And sometimes even through a duffel bag full of crap sitting in a corner.
leave a comment