The Altar Stones (Releasing The Burdens)

I know that some have been praying for me for a long time about breaking ties with my occult past. For those that have been praying, and those who didn't know about my past, I want to tell you about something that happened the other day.

I had some stones that I knew that I needed to get rid of, but I didn't see any reason to. These were my altar stones, the very stones with which I created various arrangements for my wiccan activities. I practiced summoning, spellcasting, used them in worship of my deities whom I followed, etc. I thought that when I burned my Book of Shadows back in 2008, I had ended the connection. While I burned that book, I kept many of my other items, including books on spellcasting, tarot cards, jewelry, artwork, and more. The week after Cornerstone, I set fire to all of my pagan/ wiccan things that would burn. Then I stashed them in a metal bucket in the back yard. Along with that container sat my altar stones.

Last Tuesday, I realized that I couldn't take it anymore; that if I continued to hold onto these things, even in the back yard, that it would destroy me. So I took the bucket and dumped the contents - mostly ashes - into a trash bag (because of the paintings' chemical residue, I couldn't just throw it into the compost pile) and left it by the curb.

My next step was to get one of my (many) backpacks and fill it with the stones. It probably weighed close to 40 pounds. I ran an errand, then stopped at a park not too far from here. As I pulled the bag from the trunk of the car, I thought I would just walk to the edge of the river and dump the stones into the water and walk away. But God had another way in mind.

I started down the path toward the river, surprised to see that there were so many people there. I knew that it would arouse more suspicion that I felt capable of dealing with if I just dumped the bag and walked away. So, I decided to go across the footbridge and see about throwing the stones in a little farther upriver. I walked a little way, thinking to myself, "Oh, I'll just dump them in and leave. When I get a little further up the path, no one will see me and I can just dump them and go." Except as I walked, there continued to be people. I had walked a full mile carrying that bag before I reached a point where I could begin to unload it. As I started throwing a few rocks out of it, I realized that I couldn't just dump them all in one location, that I never wanted to create the possibility of the stones being put together the way I had in the past. I felt like God was telling me to drop them along the way. So, as I started walking back, thinking that I was going to have to make this trip several times in order to get rid of them after all, I realized that the people had left. I got rid of a few stones at a time as I walked back to the car, praying all the while. As I crossed the bridge to head back to the car, I realized that my bag was completely empty.

When I got back to the car, I felt as though God was telling me to look at what had just happened. I carried that heavy, awkward bag as far as I could before I had to stop and just get rid of a few stones. Throwing them into the river, I was giving them back to God. As I walked and got rid of a few more, I gave more back to God. I knew that I couldn't continue to carry the bag as it was, I had to let God have some of that burden. At the moment when I threw the last of the stones into the water, I realized that this was what it was all about. The whole idea of letting God carry the burden; He is so much better prepared to carry my bag of stones. When we let Him carry them all, we are left to carry an empty bag. And believe me, an empty backpack weighs a lot less than one packed full of stones.