Spend it or Save it?

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matt 6:21)

Sometimes it seems my treasure is not something that others would really consider a treasure in any form of the word.  Sure, I treasure my children, my husband, my church, and yes - I really admit I treasure my belongings too.  But I have noticed lately that I have been treasuring some unorthodox things.

As a mother, my memory has gone utterly down the tubes.  I can't trust myself to remember anything these days.  My poor children have witnessed me forgetting things literally moments after they told me.  Recently though I have caught myself in  working hard to remember things that would best be forgotten.

Some bad event, usually minor in nature, will befall me - something like a diaper blow out that got all over my shirt, a nasty comment that someone maked about my family size, or some other perceived injury, and I will start to just put it away and move on.  I probably would have the incident forgotten in a few minutes.  But I stop myself, go back and rummage through the trash of my memories and dig it out.  I carefully polish the memory, marveling over how much it inconvenienced me/wrecked my day/hurt my feelings and tuck it safely away, purposefully saving it in my memory.

Then in conversations later on, I can trot it out to show it off - how much I have suffered, how mean people are, or how many excuses I have for not giving more of myself.  They can be entertaining stories!  We (especially women for the most part) love to one up each other in the game "My Day Sucks Worse Than Yours".  We commiserate and have a good laugh over these things, and it does help to know that we are not alone.

But it can become a bad habit.  Especially when we find ourselves, as I realized I was doing, relishing these stories and events and saving them up.  I wondered last night, what would happen if I didn't save up those memories?  What if I didn't nurture them and tuck them away for the next time I needed to feel sorry for myself? What if I let go of that negativity?  What if I stopped treasuring these things?  If my heart is where my treasure is, and I treasure these negative things, then no wonder I feel so dragged down!

Oooh.  There's a thought!  Would it just leave me with no war stories to swap?  Not at all.  There are some memories that will stick with us no matter what and stories that will come to mind.  Instead, as the situations come up - and they will - I can offer them up as a little prayer and then... dare I say it?

Let it go.

I might forget the event, or I might not.  It doesn't matter either way, really.  What matters is that I am not focusing on and nourishing these hurts.  This is a time when spending truly is better than saving.  I can spend the turmoil by offering it up as opposed to saving it for a rainy day, letting it stink and fester in my heart.

I'd just like to point out that I am not discussing major events or hurts.  Those may need to have some time and discussion devoted to them to help us move on.  It is the little, minor daily hurts that act like little pebbles stuffed into our shoes.  We might be able to ignore one or two and shift around to make sure it isn't causing us pain, but after a while, the shoe gets cramped and the pebbles poke too much.

So I think I am going to try letting things go a little more freely, and stop shoving pebbles in my shoes.