The Ugly Truth

Today I had to take a trip to the eye doctor’s to pick up my incredible new glasses (pictures to come), but on my way there, I passed a place from my past and the ugly truth of past decisions stared me straight in the face and it was a truth that was difficult to swallow.

I was twenty years old, freshly out of a serious, yet terribly manipulative relationship and looking for anything to fill the void that that relationship left.  I felt like there was a hole punched through me, one so large that the sunlight bled through. The edges were raw and I did everything I could to try to patch them up to make myself “whole” again. Unfortunately a lot of those fillers were decisions that I immediately regretted making. Ones that caused the little voice in my head to scream out.

I proceeded to the doctor’s office with these decisions weighing heavily on my mind and did my best to focus on the new, super cute and funky pair of glasses I picked out nearly a month ago.  I did my best to focus on whether or not they needed to be adjusted or if the fit was just right.  And then it hit me as I walked out of the office.  I had a new focus, and not just because I was looking through new frames with a new prescription.

My focus has changed over the past 10 years.  I’ve strayed from my selfish nature of trying to fit things into that void, in order to make myself feel complete.  Instead, I’ve adopted a nature of allowing Jesus to fill up the empty spaces; becoming complete through Him and not relying on others to do it for me.

I passed the place from my past on my way back to work and instead of looking at it as a symbol of my raw, selfish decisions, I looked at it as a scar, one that has healed and made me stronger and more capable to face tomorrow and the next day, and the day after that.  Sometimes the ugly truth has to surface to remind us that the past is just that, the past and the future is what’s worth living for.