What we carry.

The past can latch on and just NOT LET GO. 

__________

I had a beautiful conversation this evening with an older couple that I truly adore. Whether they realize it or not, in the few interactions that we’ve had I have come to respect and want to know them more.

At one point, we talked about our pasts. More I talked about mine and they listened, shocker… me talking - but I talked because I do feel a trust and a willingness to share with this couple.

The wife asked me about therapy - not knowing that I am so much on the bandwagon of ‘everybody should talk to someone! Get therapy!!’

Then she told me that she had recently started counseling of her own. Man, she’s a fucking superhero! That is huge! I don’t know if she thought I was serious or being silly, but I think it’s one of the most incredible things to find someone in the late fall/winter of their lives still willing to talk and open up. Walk the journey of healing the past.

I carried my past with me for a long, long time and it became so heavy and so damning. It condemned me well beyond the scars of my youth, and it tried to keep me in my pain and addiction. It tried to kill me.

Funny, even Jesus carried the weight… But then he lifted it up on a tree, and gave it to the Father.

What if we just stopped? What if we took the time to go ‘this needs to be dealt with, and I need help?’

What if we started walking through the pain and started to slowly hand it over to a higher power? Give it somewhere that can actually take care of it instead of continuing to carry it or worse, bury it! Either way it’s going to come out. Maybe it’ll come out in our anger and our frustrations or maybe it can come out in healthy conversations that lead towards peace in our spirit.

I don’t know, except for that it’s worked for me. 

And tonight/early morning as I’m writing this I realize that even when work is shit and I’m tired and frustrated, I still have more peace than I’ve had in any of the years when I was still trying to carry all those past hurts on a daily basis.

So thankful for the conversation tonight. It’s not every day that you meet an superhero!! And I hope to take some time to learn more about them soon.

If you’re still carrying the past, why don’t you look down and realize that you’re standing in the present? And hopefully, with some help let go of that and realize that today is enough, tomorrow will come, and lay those burdens down.

~ Peace

The Burtle