Ever see a water stain on a ceiling and think, “nah, that’s nothing.”  Then as time goes on it slowly starts to grow leaving behind various colored stains.   Then suddenly water starts leaking through a small hole you never noticed before and now you have to call someone to fix it because you don’t want your ceiling to start falling apart damaging the rest of your house.   One visible leak means there could be others hidden you aren’t even aware of at the time.

 Trust works the same way, regardless of the relationship.

There are small things that happen overtime we will walk past and ignore in hopes our instincts are wrong and that problem isn’t growing.  We often simply ignore it in hopes it just goes away.  We assume people are tired, busy, distracted – anything in an effort to justify the change in behavior. We all do it because we want things to work out, we want to be wrong in our suspicions, and that fairy tale to happen – who doesn’t want to ride off on a unicorn?

Sometimes the roof has to start caving in for us to realize the problem needs to be addressed in a healthy way. I don’t want to say fixed because some people and situations don’t have an easy fix, nor should any of us try to fix someone else.  That person is going to be who they are regardless of how long you have chosen to ignore that part of them.  Neither is that situation going to clear up on its own overnight just by wishing it away. These are the times we have to look inwardly and decide what we are going to tolerate in our very short lives here on Earth.

Are we going to patch a problem that continues to leak or are we going to cut away and replace the parts of the problem and move on with our life?  It’s not an easy choice because a lot of the time we become comfortable with the slow leak in our life.  It’s part of our day to day activities and interactions.  That growing issue has become part of how we think about ourselves.  All of a sudden our self worth declines and we start internalizing a problem that isn’t ours to begin with.  We have to be brave enough to step out and choose our own well being. Choose our own self esteem, our own health, and preservation.

I invite you to take an inventory, scan your own personal walls and ceilings in an effort to face those issues you’ve been avoiding.  Face those ghosts in an effort to put yourself first and start clearing away the toxicity in an effort for new trust to be established.  The trust you have for yourself.  The trust you can give to other people, free and clean of our pain and hurts from the past.

Love yourself enough to take care of yourself, mind, body, and soul.  We need you and we love you.