By Allison Bucher
I’ve never understood why people romanticize airports. I went on my first flight last year and thought the airport would be a magical place where I’d have an experience outside of my normal daily life that would “spark” something in me. Instead, I found long lines, tired faces, and a constant hum of announcements over the loudspeakers. I felt no spark at all, but rather noticed a shared feeling of listlessness and heaviness. Like everyone was carrying burdens that made each step slower than it should have been.
Anymore, it seems to be a universal experience, and not just in the airport. We all walk around with invisible baggage.
While some of us pack light, sporting only a backpack with the essentials, others overpack, stumbling through life with more than we could possibly carry. Spines ache from the crushing weight balanced on weak bodies and arms burn from the rolling bags following clumsily, but closely behind.
I get it, though. I’ve always been an over-packer. You can ask anyone who knows me well. I have been known to bring everything but the kitchen sink on trips, because you really never know when you’re going to be in need of something. I would try to anticipate every need or want, not just my own but others, too. And honestly, it was exhausting trying to bring everything for everybody. But nobody asked me to do that. It’s something I put on myself. It was a burden I carried for years, and only recently have I been able to begin putting it down.
If I had to guess, most of us have struggled with trying to be a little bit of everything for everybody, even when nobody asked. It’s not our fault though. The world has tried to persuade us all to do too much, to be someone we aren’t, to find our worth in the number of followers we have or the amount of likes we get on posts. It’s told us that status is based on the newness of our cars or the brand names on our clothes. It has encouraged us to follow trends and chase popularity. It has tried to bully us all into becoming different versions of ourselves, ones that often have us questioning who it is we see in the mirror every morning.
But what if we didn’t focus so much on becoming, but rather shifted our energy towards unbecoming?
What if we began the work of unpacking, one bag at a time? Unpacking our fears, our grief, our doubt. What if we just put down the bags we don’t need? The ones packed with comparisons, expectations, and insecurities. Imagine walking through life a little lighter. After all, the lighter we pack, the further we can go.
God calls us to lay down our burdens, to let go of the weight that was never ours to carry. In Matthew 11, Jesus invites us to trade our burdens for rest: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28). He gently invites us to exchange our heavy loads for something much lighter.
Unbecoming isn’t about losing who we are. It’s about shedding the burdens that were never ours to carry so we can become who God meant us to be. Unbecoming isn’t about doing less. It’s about carrying less. It’s about choosing rest over rush, grace over striving, and peace over pressure. It’s about learning to stop carrying everything alone and letting God shoulder some of the weight.
Maybe that’s what I was anticipating at the airport, not the destination, but the act of release. Leaving behind what we do not need so we can go further than we ever imagined. And maybe, when we finally give up all that extra weight, we’ll realize the world was never as heavy as it seemed. We were just never meant to hold it all.
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