Emotional House Cleaning

Resentment, you've been evicted, kicked out, and left at the curb of my life with other, assorted, and discarded trash!  I've finally tossed you into the trash, to be picked up by the appropriate collectors.  I never invited you into my psyche's domain in the first place.   The portal through which you entered had never before been breached. Typically, I paid attention to obvious things, rarely to the small, inarticulated, stuff. 

In fact, these behaviors"just grew," as Topsy explained.  Truthfully, until this morning I had carried resentment as lightly as a goosedown pillow on a just-bought mattress.

Like so much of my life, discontent had secured a lease in empty space, or so I thought.  Evidently, anger, irritability, and self-righteousness leeched into resentment's foundation and penetrated the crevices of my heart.  I became aware, years later, that what I'd discounted as a simple "thing" had grown like a bed of mushrooms, wild and poisonous in a dense forest.  

From where had these feelings, doubts, and uncertainties come? Why had I just now noticed them?  What had been the genesis of the disquietude? Was it contagious? "What's going on," Marvin Gaye had lyrically asked decades ago, while  I now plaintively and fearfully wonder what to do. Hmm.

Resentment emits toxic fumes that arrive as undiscerned scents. It takes trained senses to distinguish different odors, whether they're whiffs or stronger, more lasting smells.  However, I followed the maxim, "to thine own self, be true," and uncovered the culprit.  Resentment.   I'd simply ignored the truth of my behaviors.  Like Oedipus, it turns out I was the person I was looking for! 

Introspection ranks as one of my least favorite activities.  It takes so long, often too long! It requires deep cleansing, which I'm never eager to undertake.  Metaphorically, soap and water might not do the job.  Often soaking, bleaching, other household cleaners, and scouring pads must be used. I've found that often I need help from other people, places, or things.  

Sometimes, prayer must be enjoined. Whoa! But, yes, it was that serious and just as needed! I remember the deacons at my childhood church who used to describe conversion by declaring, "The angels in heaven done changed my name!"