What Are You Leaving Behind?

This morning, I was sitting with my coffee, reading the Lagniappe, when I came across an article by Alan Sealls, an adjunct meteorology professor at the University of South Alabama.

He was writing about something I had honestly never spent much time thinking about: the tiny particles of plastic and rubber that wear away from everyday things.

Our shoes.

Our tires.

Weed eater string.

All of these things slowly wear down as we use them, leaving behind teeny, tiny particles that eventually make their way somewhere.

As Sealls joked, where did we think they went? “Shoe Heaven?”

I laughed because, well, he’s not wrong.

I have never really stopped to wonder where the missing tread from my shoes went. Or the rubber that disappears from a tire over thousands of miles. Or those little pieces of weed eater string that somehow vanish while we’re working in the yard.

They don’t actually vanish.

They go somewhere.

And sitting there drinking my coffee, I suddenly thought:

What about us?

We leave little microscopic pieces of ourselves everywhere we go, too.

Every interaction.

Every conversation.

Every word.

Every gesture.

Every room we walk into.

Every person whose life brushes against ours.

We are constantly depositing something.

And that made me wonder:

What am I leaving behind?

Is it good?

Is it kind?

Is it nourishing?

Is it something that helps life grow?

God has had His way with me over the years, and the truth is, He still does on the daily.

There are pieces of wisdom living inside me now because somebody, somewhere, gave me a word at exactly the right time.

Someone showed me kindness.

Someone told me the truth.

Someone extended grace.

Someone allowed the light of Christ in them to reach the part of me that needed it.

They may not even remember doing it.

But I do.

Those tiny moments became part of me.

Little spiritual micro-particles, if you will.

One word.

One gesture.

One conversation.

One moment where God used another person to remind me who I was, where I was going, or that I could keep going at all.

And my life was changed because of them.

I recently had one of those moments myself.

It was one of those encounters that I can only describe as a God moment.

My husband was sitting nearby watching the whole thing unfold. Afterward, he looked at me and said, “I’ve never seen anything like what just happened in there. It was as if the person you were talking with wasn’t someone you had just met, but someone you had known for a lifetime. You two were speaking your own language.”

And he was right.

Something happened in that room.

Something far bigger than a simple conversation between two people who had just met.

It was one of those strange, beautiful, wild little moments where God steps into the ordinary and suddenly everything feels sacred.

A divine assignment.

A connection.

A recognition.

Call it whatever you want.

I know what I felt.

And it made me start thinking about all the other moments like that throughout my life.

People who came and went.

Words that stayed.

Conversations that changed the course of something.

Little moments that probably looked completely insignificant from the outside but became landmarks in my spirit.

Because little things accumulate.

And that is where this metaphor became uncomfortable for me.

Microplastics accumulate, too.

Tiny pieces we barely notice can build up over time and cause real damage.

And so can we.

Not every piece of ourselves we leave behind is beautiful.

There have been times in my own life when I know I have caused harm.

Sometimes intentionally.

Sometimes unintentionally.

Sometimes because I was hurting.

Sometimes because I didn’t know better.

Sometimes because I did know better and still didn’t do better.

And I think spiritual maturity requires us to be honest about that.

We can believe deeply in grace, redemption, restoration, and the transforming power of God while also acknowledging that restoration does not erase history.

God can change me.

God can redeem me.

God can make something beautiful from what once was broken.

But that does not mean some things were never done.

Some words were still spoken.

Some wounds were still created.

Some little pieces of me landed somewhere I wish they hadn’t.

And there is humility in admitting that.

But I also don’t believe God calls us to spend our lives staring backward, trying to retrieve every microscopic piece of ourselves we wish we had never left behind.

Sometimes there is amends to make.

Sometimes there is accountability.

Sometimes there is forgiveness to seek.

Sometimes there is simply a lesson to carry forward.

And sometimes, as the divine word came through during one of my recent “woo-woo wild” moments:

Dust your feet off and don’t look back.

Not because the past doesn’t matter.

But because God still has somewhere for you to go.

You learn.

You repent where repentance is needed.

You grow.

You become more conscious.

You allow God to transform you.

And then you become much more intentional about what you leave behind next.

Because if tiny harmful things accumulate, then surely tiny beautiful things do too.

Imagine the impact of a lifetime of microscopic goodness.

A compliment given freely.

A meal delivered.

A prayer whispered.

A stranger treated with dignity.

A child encouraged.

A friend forgiven.

A truth spoken in love.

A hand extended.

A person made to feel seen.

A simple, “I’m proud of you.”

A conversation somebody remembers twenty years later even though you forgot it by Tuesday.

We spend so much time looking for the big assignment.

The platform.

The calling.

The moment when God reveals some enormous purpose and suddenly everything makes sense.

But what if so much of our purpose happens at the microscopic level?

What if the Kingdom of God is built, at least in part, through a million tiny deposits of love?

One person.

One word.

One decision.

One interaction.

One moment at a time.

The fruits of the Spirit aren’t just things we profess.

They are things we leave behind.

Love.

Joy.

Peace.

Patience.

Kindness.

Goodness.

Faithfulness.

Gentleness.

Self-control.

Little pieces of Christ scattered everywhere our lives touch.

And maybe we never get to see what grows from some of them.

Maybe the person you encourage today carries that encouragement into another conversation tomorrow.

Maybe the kindness you show someone changes how they treat their children that evening.

Maybe something you say becomes a sentence somebody holds onto during one of the hardest seasons of their life.

Maybe God is doing things through us that we will never fully understand on this side of eternity.

So that’s what I’m sitting with today.

We are all leaving pieces of ourselves behind.

Everywhere.

With everything we say.

Everything we do.

Everyone we touch.

The question isn’t whether we leave something behind.

We do.

The question is:

What are you choosing to leave behind?

What will be the fruit of your spirit?

What will accumulate because you were here?

And where is God leading you next?

Whew, Lord.

What a word.