The Glory Days

I'm packing to move.  I'll be moving 1000 miles away and I'm trying to take as little as possible.  There are certain things I'll definitely take and certain things I definitely won't but what do I do with the stuff that could go?  I'm at the point in my packing that the easy thing to do would be box everything else up and take it along.  I could be done actually packing in two hours, ready to load and move.  But I don't think I'll do it that way.  There are still things to be sorted.

While sorting this week I ran across a box with many old things in it.  Trophies, plaques, and awards from high school and before, high school and college yearbooks, pictures from prom, etc.  Do I take them or do I toss them.  While I had made a decision on some of the items that is much of the decisions still to be made but I also realized tonight that some of this also affects my outlook on life.  I honestly think if I had been moving a year ago, most awards and recognitions from the past would have been important for me to take with me.  Now they are easier to consider expendable.

What's the difference?  I have always struggled with my self worth and feeling important.  The awards and recognition I have received at times have been highlights for me as they've given big boost to my self-esteem.  Over the years as I have given up on some dreams I have hung on to those awards as a way to look back and see value and accomplishment in my life.  I've spent the last number of years in one sense living in the past or re-living the "glory days" instead of making my current days glorious.  I was living with past memories instead of creating new ones.

Today my perspective is different.  I have a lot to live for.  My worth is not based on who I was or what I did.  My worth is based on who I am today and who I am becoming - more realistically who God is creating and forming me to be.  I will no longer live in the past or get my value from my "glory days" but I will spend my time making my current days glorious which will create new memories and new moments to reflect not on my own accomplishment but rather on what God can do with a soul continually yielded to Him.

So today I'll sort, pack, and throw some things away so that tomorrow I can move toward a new beginning with new memories, new moments, and new glory as I continue to allow God to create in me a new person.

Less of me.  More of Him.
-Eric