What's in your backpack?

As part of our home group's series on Pilgrimage, Charlie and I led our meeting yesterday on the "Journey of Simplicity." There is so much that can be done on the topic and we took a while to settle on which part of "simplicity" we were going to focus on.

Part of what we focused on was to go back to our core selves and think about what is that makes up what we truly "need." Charlie read a chapter from A Way: The Story of a Long Walk, a wonderful book written by my own incredibly talented sister, Jenna Smith, called "The Backpack." And we used the idea of a backpack as a metaphor for reflecting on and discussing what we carry in our life/faith journey's backpack. Things that weight us down, things we would prefer to discard, things we absolutely need and help along the way.

It's such a good book! You should read it!

We talked a lot about relationships, family, God, faith - all good and necessary things in our backpacks. But we also talked about hurts and past mistakes that we continue to carry with us. One big one was grief and mourning. Grief is a natural part of life, but we agreed that living overseas, ongoing grief is a big part of our lives and much closer to the surface. We are constantly having to say goodbye to dear friends, friends who become more like family in this context, and it is an ongoing struggle to hold those relationships with open hands.

We also talked about deferred mourning, for family members, such as grandparents, who pass away "back home," and if we're unable to travel home for the funeral, it often doesn't really become real until we go home and they are no longer there. I have experienced this a little with the passing of grandmother at the end of last year. I know she's gone, but I sometimes catch myself thinking about seeing her when we go home at Christmas. 

We carry these things with us, and all the emotions that go along with them. The battle of feeling torn between two worlds, the relationships that are so encouraging but sometimes come with expectations we may not be ready to meet, the past mistakes that, although forgiven, still weigh on us many years later. 

So, what's in your backpack? What do you need to carry with you in order to ease the journey? What do you wish you could discard from the backpack and leave behind?