breathe in deeper now...

i was taking a shower the other day and realized i hadn’t used my exfoliating scrub stuff in a while. so, i grabbed it and as i did…i looked at what the bottle said – ‘exfoliates & purifies'. i thought…hmm…isn’t this just what God does for us? he cleanses us…scrubs away all of the dead stuff on the surface to reveal the shiny new beautiful stuff underneath.

so, as i was rubbing some into my leg (and inhaling the nice grapefruit fragrance) i felt my leg getting hot. i was startled at first, but then remembered that it was self-heating. it’d been so long since i’d used it that i forgot about that part. the more you rub, the hotter it gets on your skin. and again, i thought…that’s how we work.

we let stuff build up. and we don’t pray. it doesn’t bother us at first. then, by the time we start to notice…it’s gotten pretty bad and we decide to do something about it. so, we pray. we ask God to take this stuff from us. we ask Him to take away all of our impurities and make us clean again. but, we forget. we forget that it hurts. it hurts to get rid of stuff. sometimes we’re still holding on. sometimes He has to scrub extra hard. we forget that the harder we pray, the harder things get.

things usually heat up before they get better.

and the longer we hold on to things, the harder it is to let go of them. Jesus died on the cross for our sins so that we don’t have to. He has already been through everything we’ll ever have to go through. He is standing there with outstretched arms asking us to hand over our burdens…it’s up to us when we choose to lay them down.

i just want you to know who i am.

a lot can happen over time. trends change. friends drift. friends become closer. people grow up. and growing up and growing together hurts. when you haven’t known someone your whole life, there’s always that‘life before they were in it’. it’s that uncomfortable subject that nobody wants to talk about, but you both know is there. it’s the black cloud hanging over the room.

when you become so close to someone that you can’t remember your life before they were in it, it hurts to hear things about their life pre-you. and whether it’s some jaw-dropping story or some mundane detail, someone’s feelings are going to get hurt if it’s left out. and someone’s feelings are going to get hurt because they weren’t part of it. it’s a no-win situation.

and when you’re learning about each other, it’s important to keep what you already know in focus. you know this person. you love this person. if you find out that they spiked their hair and listened to the cure in high school, you can’t hold that against them. it has nothing to do with your relationship. they are still the same person that you know and fell in love with.

it’s good to know and learn about each other’s pasts because it helps you understand where they’ve been and how they’ve become the person that they are. but it’s also dangerous to learn these things because it’s very easy to let yourself become fixated on things from the past. it’s easy to think that you don’t like the set of friends they used to hang out with and judge them for that. it will create distance, even if you don’t mean for it to.

these ‘questions about the past’ aren’t questions to be asked carelessly or answered recklessly. these are questions that will directly affect your relationship. they should be asked only if you are prepared to hear the answers. and they should be answered honestly. because once they’re answered honestly, you’ll have to deal with the answers. and if your relationship can handle that kind of raw honesty, chances are…it can handle anything.