Yesterday, I noticed one of my preschool students sitting on the ground, struggling with his pant legs. He had on a long-sleeved onesie (I’m not sure if they were pajamas, or what), so I thought maybe he was fiddling with the buttons running up and down his pant legs. Then, I saw the huge lumps behind the clothing, and asked him, “Do you have toys in your pants?!”

He replied with a guilty look along with silence. I knew he was a collector of sorts since he loved to bring little trinkets from home to school, and hold them in his hands all day unless we took them away from him, and put them in his backpack so he wouldn’t leave them at school. So, to see him trying to stow away some of his favorite toys from the classroom, and possibly take them home with him was no surprise.

(As I write this, I realize I should write more about my every day shenanigans with 2-year-old preschoolers because truly, I can’t make anything up in regards to the things that occur in the classroom I teach in!)

Since he was assigned to me as one of the kids whose diapers I had to change that day, I told him to go ahead and make his way to the changing table so I could rid him of whatever toys he decided to hoard, and change his diaper afterwards. What I discovered after opening his pant legs were not two to three toys, but OVER TEN TOYS falling out of this kid’s outfit! I was appalled, and also, sort of impressed 😂 but I told him that he wasn’t allowed to keep toys away from children, and he wasn’t allowed to take the toys from the classroom home with him.

This child and his actions cause me to reflect on my own life as I am doing things to get to the next level in my creativity, in my every day tasks, in my job, etc. Because while I’m elevating, there are things, emotions, thoughts, even people that I am tempted to bring with me to that next level, and sometimes I’m pretty good at hoarding or hiding them so that this is so. But one thing about God, of course, is that He knows what needs to stay and what needs to go.

Honestly, I recently experienced a conversation that turned into the end of a friendship that I never expected to end. I held onto this person, thinking that as we both advanced in what we were doing, we’d alway support each other genuinely. But God had other plans, and although it still hurts me to think about losing someone in the way that I did, it was God’s way of saying that where I was going, that person couldn’t go with me. And maybe it happened the way it did because if God had tried to show me other signs in which I could step away from this person, I would have ignored them because they were truly a friend I wanted to keep through the years to come.

I say all this to ask you: what or who are you holding onto that maybe God is calling you to let go of in order for you to move forward? It doesn’t have to be a person, it could even be an emotion or attitude, such as selfishness, jealousy, or anger. It might be a perspective or thought process that you’ve continued to have for a long time, but God desires for you to learn to break free from it (I definitely had one of those! I sometimes still fall into that thought process, but I’m grateful to God for pulling me out each and every day!).

Whatever it is, I pray that you’d depend on the Lord for the strength to break free from it. I pray that if He sends you signs to let it go, that you’d do it without hesitation, and even if it hurts, you relying on Him will heal that pain. We just can’t take everything or everyone with us as we elevate; only those who the Lord allows, who are sincerely for us and our journey, and who are going to continuously push us to do what God has called us to do!

Mishy 🦋