I’m starting to understand more and more every day that our past do not define us. I know I know. I don’t like the little “lines” of life. I’m not a big believer in the “don’t sweat the small stuff” cheesiness of quoting some random quirk when you have nothing creative or helpful to actually say.

But, back to what I was saying.

I know that our past hurt us. The things that happened to us, or others that we are close to really shape us into who we are. There is no denouncing that at all, I couldn’t be a psych major and not get that! But what we do with that hurt, that issue is totally on us.

Try and think of your hurt, issue, life lesson is you want to call it that as a mat.

We sit and lay on this mat, we curl up with this mat, the mat becomes what we are. There is no us with out this mat. We like our little mat. Its a great mat too. If you move you still have your mat to curl up on and use it to defend you, defend your actions.

I’m like this because of my…(enter person here).

Its not my fault I don’t ..(issue here)… because..(reason here)..

Mat, mat, mat, mat.

Now what if you just get up? What if you just take up your mat and say I’m so not laying on this anymore. I am not letting my self lay around when there is so much more I can do standing up.

So what do we do with this mat? Bury it? Hide it away just in case we want it for a rainy day?

No. We carry it with us. We carry it so that we can see others on there mats and say. “you see my mat, this is were I was at. This is what it looked like, see it looks like yours but you can get up and walk too.”

We love out mats because they are proof of where we came from. They are proof of what we can over come.

They are proof of the love that was given to us to over come our mat.

John 5:8-9