Have you ever noticed during a parade with horses, there's someone following along behind cleaning up the manure? I was thinking back on my previous blog and how when you have strong feelings about something, you need to "sit there, or it will just sit there."
I realized, too, that when we do something that makes a mess for someone else, we don't just get to move forward in our parade, and let the guy with the shovel clean it up. We need to circle back and grab a shovel. To stay in the moment long enough to clean up the mess before moving forward. Not like a parade at all. We own our messes.
We talk a lot at Abundant Life about how people are messy. Sometimes what gets lost in translation is that it doesn't mean we don't have to take care of our messes. Sometimes we try to just keep moving forward, even though our actions sometimes hurt us more than we acknowledge, hurt those we care about, even those who don't know us that well.
As Christ followers, we have an obligation to go back and clean up our messes, to restore relationships, to make things right. That's love. That's putting our own emotional and spiritual health and that of others in front of our parade.
Do you need to double back and clean something up? Have you hurt someone's feelings? Lost trust? Left a bad taste in someone's life? I know I have at times. I thank God for the Holy Spirit that gives me that nudge that says "go back, you left some manure back there."
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