I’ve had many people, friends, relatives, neighbors, anyone that gets to know me well, tell me that I’m “special”. Some go as far as to say “God must really love you”. I always try to downplay it, ignore it, whatever. “If only they knew the real me” I’d say to myself.
Anyway, I would then remember all my baggage from the past. Stuff I did to myself, stuff I did to others, stuff people did to me. I would remember it all, and I would feel so ashamed inside when I got these “compliments”. I wanted to scream to the top of my lungs “I ain’t so effin special!!! What is wrong with you???!!!” But I never did. Instead I would just go home, and sit. And wish I never left the house. “What is it they see? Okay so I’m ‘good’ now but it doesn’t erase what I’ve done.”
This is kind of a problem with repentence. Well, I won’t say it’s a problem. But what happens is that some of us that have a really shitty past have a hard time letting that stuff go. It’s like a “once a sinner, always a sinner” attitude that some, myself included, take on to keep from acting pretentious. I understand how it feels. Been there, done that. There’s just one little problem with taking on this sort of attitude, well two actually.
First off, this is a trick used against us from evil forces to keep us from moving ahead and spiritually evolving. If you keep wailing on and on about how sinful you used to be, you’ll always do just that and nothing else. You may never reach your full potential, which might be helping others to rise up and purify. Imagine that through your life’s story you can inspire 10 people to actually change and improve their lives, that’s 10 people getting closer to God, which equals 10 people the darkside will lose. So by keeping 1 person from reaching their full spiritual potential (aka you), evil forces gets 10 souls for free. Wow, that’s a pretty good deal I’d say, and you’re the broker. Feels pretty good, no? Yeah, I didn’t think so.
Here’s the other reason, it’s just plain stupid. Consider this analogy.
Say you have in your hand a glass of water that’s absolutely filthy. It’s got dirt, muck, worms, germs, parasites, all sorts of stuff in it. No way will anyone drink it, right? Not unless you’re dying of thirst and there isn’t water around for days. So basically this is just dirty water to avoid drinking at all costs. Here are two things we can gain from this. First it is still water, and second, there are things in it. No matter how dirty you make it, what you put in it, it will always be water. And these dirty, filthy things have been placed in, which means they can come out.
Now, lets say you take this glass of water, run it through any purification/filtering process to clean it up. And now, in your hand is a clean, sparkling, clear glass of water to drink. So you tell me, how much sense does it make for you to go on and on and on about how dirty it was BEFORE purification? It’s clean now, so drink it! Don’t worry about what was before the purification process, enjoy what is now, today, and drink up.
*Gulp gulp* ahhhh!
In this analogy, the water represented our souls. Each soul has kind of a memory, and it can hold stuff, good and bad. But the good thing is that no matter how much stuff you put in it, it’s still a soul, and stuff can be taken out of it. Along the way you may get a dirt speck in there, and that’s fine, just clean it out. Purification is a continual process, it’s ongoing. It never ends. And we can thank this world for that.
So, now, when someone calls me “special”, I thank them for acknowledging, and just tell them I’m trying to get better, trying to improve, just growing and learning and breathing.
And then when I’m alone I think about it, and smile. I smile in gratitude to God Most High that I’m no longer where I used to be. And I smile in hope and faith that I will continue to change by His Grace and Mercy.
The Fire Within 