Sunday, March 19, 2006

Cleansing

If you have read my other blog at all, you know that I've done a lot of soul searching as I take steps in becoming Catholic. Because of some recent events, I have begun really looking into those things that I am harboring. Today I did what you might call a little house cleaning today. I got rid of some things that I have been holding on to, that are not helping me get closer to God. I also had a nice fire tonight. I had a stack of papers that would be considered "dirt" on another person and tonight I burned them along with some pictures that no longer have a place in my life. It was quite a relief to let go of all of it.

I found that it is more difficult to burn a stack of papers than it seems. I forgot about fire really needing oxygen to burn. When it didn't burn like I thought it should, I took a few papers and wadded them up putting some on top and then a few below. That seemed to do the trick to get the fire going pretty well. I then helped it along with the fireplace poker. I watched them burn until nothing but ashes were left.

Luckily I was a little smarter than my ex-husband. (I'm sorry Richard, but I have to tell the story on here.) Shortly before he and I met, he sort of did the same thing. He did it more out of anger, however. He had a girlfriend that he found out was cheating on him. He broke it off with her and then proceeded to gather a lot of the things he had bought her and decided to get rid of them. He lived out in the country at the time and had a large pit where he would throw his trash. He threw the stuff in the pit and poured gasoline or something to help it burn. He then threw a match down there. Nothing happened. He did it again. Again, nothing happened. Of course he would walk away for fear of flames coming up, but again and again, he couldn't get it to light. He finally dropped another match and watched it go down. Turns out that the pit was quite deep and the match would blow out before it hit the bottom. So he got smart. He wrapped a stack of matches together, lit them and threw them down into the pit. He briefly remembers the fireball that shot out. When he came to, he was about 20 feet away on his back. He had no eyebrows left and the top of his hair was singed. He really was quiet lucky, albeit stupid. We met shortly after that. I didn't really notice the eyebrows (I guess they had started to grow back in), but his face was still a little red I guess because he made a point to tell me that he had been involved in a fire. I figured it had something to with his job being a police officer and it was until sometime later I heard the real story. But I guess the cleansing for him seemed to help.

1 comment:

Summer said...

Excellent. We can all learn something from this post.