It Was Never Really About the Bag

A bag went missing when we arrived at our hotel. We had watched someone from the staff take it and were told several times, “Don’t worry, it will be brought to your room.” But it never arrived. What followed were days of uncertainty, questions, and that uncomfortable place where the mind can begin creating stories faster than life can reveal the truth.

I felt it. I felt the fear and the insecurity underneath it. But I also knew I didn’t want to build from there. So I kept returning to my breath, to prayer, to the Holy Spirit, to the things I know to be true even when circumstances temporarily make them difficult to feel.

Then today, I cried. And something moved. It felt as though the emotional weight I had been carrying could finally leave my body. And when it did, I realized something. I no longer needed the situation to change in order for something in me to change. Peace had already returned.

That was when I understood that perhaps this was never really about the bag. The situation had become a place where my own integrity could be revealed to me. Could I remain faithful to what I know while standing inside what I don’t know? Could I feel fear without allowing fear to become the place from which I create? Could I recognize the sacred orchestration at work before I could recognize the outcome?

And suddenly, the experience felt different. Not smaller, but sacred. Life had used something ordinary to refine something within me. The story is still unfolding, but the most important part may have already happened. I found the realization before the fulfillment. In that place of peace, something greater allowed me to see what the situation had really been revealing in me all along. And somehow, once I could see it, something already felt complete. The outer circumstances may still be unfolding, but the deeper work had been accomplished.

Maybe that is what some experiences are here to do. Refine us, refine us, refine us, until we can see that what happened to us was never the whole story.

May we have the grace to recognize the sacred work within what we do not yet understand, and the faith to trust the Orchestrator of life before we can see how the whole story comes together.

Blessings ∞