How I Died

Some days, I am weighted down by the sheer knowledge of my own filth.

I live and breathe and laugh. Sometimes I even speak, and others listen. There are days that some call me "wise" or "mature." Once or twice, I believe them. More often, I feel guilty. Dirty. Fake.

Is what they see real? Or do I live to hide the abomination of my own being?

Perhaps we are all abominations, in our own right. And yet perhaps, it is this that gives us  beginning. You can't have an ending without a beginning. Can't have an after without a before.

Can't have salvation without abomination.

What drags at my conscience is the in-between. The now. The sanctification not yet complete. The work in progress.

The life of a Christ-follower places us at the fulcrum point: behind us, the filth. We see it still, and it nags at us, taunts us. Before us, the plunge. There is no memory of the abominations there - the dirt that clings to the bits and pieces of a former life.

But we are in the now. Not yet perfected. Clinging only to the sight ahead.

The past is forgiven, but not erased. We are all of us abominable.

Which is why we must cease to be "us."

The days full of guilt and shame and grief belong to another life, and must be left there. When my mind tries to revive them, I must simply remember.

Remember how I died.

Photo courtesy of Of All Loveliness