Boxed up emotions

Do you have no access spaces? You know those areas inside that you know about but pretend you don't? Like the relative no-one sees at Christmas, you kinda pretend they don't exist until one year they show up drunk and you remember why you pretended they didn't exist but have no choice but to deal with them.. That sounds horrible but you get the point. Back to the no access areas, do you have them? If so what are they for you?

Mine generally relate to past relationships, they are possibly my biggest no go to zones. My theory is they ended for a reason put them away and move on but unfortunately it's not that simple. Unfortunately the drug addict, the affair, the friend, the high school sweetheart each of them left an imprint, each in their own way whether good or bad or both, they shape who you are and how you interact with members of the opposite sex. I would rather forget about them, look for the lesson in them, be thankful for the lessons and then move forward but lately I've been realising that you can't move forward while you are still tripping over your past and that until you will keep tripping over the same emotions until you let them heal.

You see I am one of those annoying life goes on people, the pick yourself up, dust yourself off and keep moving kind. I am generally so busy moving forward that I neglect to feel the full emotion of all that has happened and end up putting it in a box and labelling it "junk - do not open". Lately, I find myself in situations where these emotions or the relationships that they stemmed from are re-surfacing and after years of locking them away I am looking at them with fresh eyes. Eyes of love and not of hate. Eyes of healing not of hurt. I am amazed at what I am seeing... besides seeing how one little decision made in a moment of heart-ache can result in years of poor relationship choices I have seen the power that fear gives a situation.

You see when you are afraid of feeling the hurt of a break-up and you quickly put those emotions in a box and lock them away, you give the emotions a strange power over you. Something happens when you don't even look at them, when you just go "wow this hurts" and lock them away, it's like you are so busy being afraid of getting hurt that you don't take time to see how big the hurt really is. Now I find myself opening up the boxes after all these years and the main thing I am discovering is that the hurt I was afraid of isn't even that big. For years I have been locking away these emotions, too afraid to see them because the hurt would be too much to bare but all this time it was a lie. The hurt wasn't what was big, the fear was.

All this time and it was the fear because the emotions themselves, the relationships that ended, when I look at it instead of hiding it, when I stop being afraid and I lay it all out in front of me.. well it all seems so much smaller. So I've decided to keep taking the lids of the boxes, I am reaching in and taking out the relationships and the emotion and I am looking at them and letting them be healed.  

We all have no go areas, spaces inside that we don't access, each of us have these little storage compartments deep inside where we store all the stuff that we don't want to think about but the longer we store them there the bigger they get and the more afraid of them we become. So my prayer is that this week we will have the courage to take the lid of at least one box, that we carefully and lovingly lay it's contents on the floor and then we look at the contents with eyes of love and allow God to heal the pain that only he can heal. Be blessed and let your emotions free xo