Recently someone told me about her struggles while painting her daughter\u2019s bedroom.\u00a0 The daughter had written on the wall with a black marker.\u00a0 At first they painted over the marker assuming it would cover it, but when the paint dried, the stain remained.\u00a0 They tried a second coat.\u00a0 Almost no help.\u00a0 A third coat.\u00a0 The stain wouldn\u2019t budge.\u00a0 Of course!\u00a0 Primer! That would do it!\u00a0 Nope. \u00a0They could still see the marker bleeding through.\u00a0 It was less obvious, but the stain was there.<\/p>\n
Eventually, they found something to hide the dreadful marker stain, but I was struck by how hard they had to work to cover it up.\u00a0 Naturally, I related it to my work.\u00a0 I meet with people all the time who have \u201cstains\u201d they are dealing with.\u00a0 We all have embarrassing stains in our pasts that we would prefer to erase.\u00a0 Despite our best efforts, the stains keep coming back.\u00a0 Something keeps reminding us of the stains we wish had never occurred.<\/p>\n
I know if that marker situation had happened in my home, every time I walked in the room, I couldn’t help but glance quickly at the wall for evidence of the stain. \u00a0I know I do that with the stains of my past, too, but the things I wish had never occurred are indelibly written on the walls of my life.\u00a0 So what do we do when we have nasty stains in our lives?\u00a0 Obviously, we can\u2019t erase them \u2013 they happened and there is evidence.\u00a0 Often, our attempts at covering up the stains make them more obvious than if we\u2019d have just let them be in the first place.<\/p>\n
We can move-on to new places and people to reduce the threat of exposure, but the stain remains visible in our hearts long after everyone around us has forgotten. \u00a0This is where I find people struggle the most.\u00a0 They can\u2019t forgive themselves.\u00a0 They can\u2019t accept that the stain is now part of their past.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n They stay stuck in the room painting and painting and trying everything to conceal the stains.\u00a0 They glare at the wall, knowing that the stains will eventually return.\u00a0 These battles with the stains of their lives cause them to make more stains that require more cover-up and before long, they are crippled by the stains of their lives.<\/p>\n It is true, we can\u2019t erase our pasts, but if we are to have peace in our hearts, we simply must accept that stains are part of life.\u00a0 We cannot have an unmarred life.\u00a0 The stains and scars and nicks that occur don\u2019t contaminate our lives, they enrich us. \u00a0Yes, I said enrich us!\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong>We learn lessons from the mistakes we make.\u00a0 We build character.\u00a0 We build experience that helps us step around things that could hurt us in the future.\u00a0 We gain wisdom that can help others.\u00a0 We learn things about ourselves.\u00a0 By being humbled, we gain empathy and compassion for others.\u00a0 We gain the ability to reach places within ourselves that we could never go to without experiencing that pain.<\/p>\n So while you may be sitting there staring at the stains of your life, I implore you to take your gaze off of the stains for a minute.<\/p>\n Look to the right and left.\u00a0 Look behind you.\u00a0 You are sitting in a room with 80% perfect, stain-free walls.\u00a0 You can spend your time staring at the stained spots on one wall, or you can decorate the rest of the room.\u00a0 While I know the stains are glaring to you, I can assure you that the stains will fade as soon as you stop staring at them<\/strong><\/em> and the world will be drawn to the beauty of the rest of the room.\u00a0 How are you going to deal with your stains?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Recently someone told me about her struggles while painting her daughter\u2019s bedroom.\u00a0 The daughter had written on the wall with a black marker.\u00a0 At first they painted over the marker assuming it would cover it, but when the paint dried, the stain remained.\u00a0 They tried a second coat.\u00a0 Almost no help.\u00a0 A third coat.\u00a0 The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[761,762,394,445,763,764,765,766,589,767],"class_list":["post-3604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marriage","tag-4th-step","tag-5th-step","tag-abandonment","tag-addiction","tag-coping-with-sin","tag-erase-my-past","tag-forgiving-myself","tag-how-do-i-forgive-myself","tag-how-to-have-a-happy-life","tag-self-forgiveness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3604"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4231,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3604\/revisions\/4231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}