The Stains of Others

I am a church guy. I have been going to church ever since I can remember. I am, at this point in my life, doing fine as a full time keyboard player. That is code for I am a church musician. If you play the piano, you play at church… (a story that would involve consecutive blog posts). I said all that to say this; there are many scriptures and scriptural references that I know and have been hearing for my whole life. One popped up in my head…not sure of the book, chapter, and verse. ( Fact: Even the devil quotes scripture. So don’t be fooled ALL the time by the church mouth!) It’s the one when they talk about washing them white as snow. This got me to thinking…

Some of the people that come into our lives don’t leave impressions or marks, they leave stains. They stain and blemish our confidence. They foul the spectrum of our accomplishments and discolor our attempts. If you take notice, I made it a point to say “our”. I did so because we have all had someone in our lives like that. Even the people who act like that only do it to everyone else as retribution for the same thing happening to them.

There is a fork in the road here. Actually, there is one of those traffic circles with about 6 exits. This can go many ways. There is no way I could actually talk about everything, but I will say this….If I knew that stains hurt like that I would have taken my suit to the hospital a long time ago. See, as a church musician I have to have suits. That is not to say that you will ever see me in a suit and tie, it’s sort of rare. But I do need suits. I have one that I like. It’s one of those suits that you buy the coat off one rack and the pants off the other…..my money was funny. I really like the suit though. The fabric makes the slight color difference negligible and besides I get to wear my brown church shoes with it…Laugh it you must.

Folks, my suit has 2 stains in it. They are rough stains and I am sick about it. Taken it to the cleaners 3 times and every time I get it back it has a little tag that says “sorry, we tried but couldn’t get this out”. It usually has a sad cartoon character on it. So what I realized is that they are going to clean the suit, but they are only going to get it as clean as they can. I can either wear the suit, or I can throw it away. Those stains are not coming out.

I believe it’s the same thing with us. You can get most stains out. A little treatment may be required before the wash cycle, but most stains on our lives are forgotten over time. But there are some stains that will just not come out. You can go to church, which would be my first piece of advice. You can sometimes even find it in your heart to forgive on your own. You can do little things to get back at the perpetrator, which is not recommended. You could even go too far and become obsessed with payback and devote your life to making someone else’s life miserable. And there are people that do it too. (I promise I know 2 for sure) Whatever we do to when it comes to those deep stains might help a little, but they are not going to ever come out.

Follow me here…. I’m NOT throwing away MY suit. I have one suit that I really like and I can promise you that those 2 little stains are not going to keep me from rocking it. I get to wear my shoes with it too??!! Unless someone is taking the time to stare me down from head to toe, they probably won’t see it anyway. And if they do see it…so what? The question would be; why are they looking sooo hard? Now, the people that are closest to me would probably see it, but I don’t get close that to everyone so that’s ok. In fact, they would probably tell me I have the stains on my suit if they really care about me…just so I would know. I didn’t put those stains on my suit on purpose, they just happened.

Here again I believe it should be the same way with us. It’s time out for trying to act like we don’t have any stains. Some things that have happened to us will be there until the end of time. No need to act like they are not there, and please don’t convince yourself that they are not. It’s ok…you can’t let a couple or even a few stains affect how you live your life. What I mean is, We can’t let a couple or even a few stains affect the way We live Our lives. We have to wear it anyway, might as well make it look the best it can.

Life happens. Clothes get stained, we get stained. Sometimes it’s accidental; sometimes it’s a cruel trick. The truth about it is, the stains are there forever. I’m still wearing my suit….gonna look good in it too.