The Stains We Hold

I can't believe I'm about to share this, but I've always wanted to be authentic and vulnerable as much as possible on this corner of the internet. I don't feel called to share everything, but I know when I do feel called, I share it.

So, this happened to me last week while I attended a Christian women's conference. During a short break, I ran to the bathroom to do my duties and change my tampon, but I literally bled through my underwear. I tried to see if anything was on my pretty much white dress, but I couldn't see in the bathroom as the lighting wasn't the best, so I thought I was good. But then I went out to my car to grab something and figured, "let me double check."

Welp, I even bled through on my dress.

You would have thought I would have been super embarrassed, and maybe I was a little bit, but I was just like, "yeah, okay, this happens"—even though I couldn't tell you the last time this happened to me. So of course it had to be in a public setting. The previous day, I had dealt with bad cramps and read this affirmation aloud from Louise Hay's Heal Your Body: "I now take charge of my mind and my life. I am a powerful, dynamic woman! Every part of my body functions perfectly. I love me." Little did I know that would help me the next day.

I drove home during the lunch break to quickly change and then headed back so I didn't miss the rest of the conference. As I was driving back, I started to talk to God, and I just had this thought about not only being a woman and the beauty of it, but what really stood out to me was the word stains…

How so many of us walk around with stains on our hearts, minds, and maybe even physically on our bodies. Some people can see the stains, some people can't—most of them, you can't see. Maybe it's the past, maybe it's childhood trauma, maybe it's your own actions and behaviors that have caused some of the stains, maybe it's hurt and pain that someone else left on you… but what did Jesus come to do?

Wash us clean AND heal us.

Isaiah 1:18: "Come now, and let us reason together, says the LORD. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be like wool."

Jeremiah 30:17 - "For I will restore health to you, and your wounds I will heal, declares the LORD."

I just had this beautiful reminder that sometimes we hang on to the stains too long, or we allow them to stay longer than they need to. But in reality, we need to bring them to Him—to be washed, cleansed, and healed. I, for one, sometimes look at those stains too many times, and it truly does hold me back, if I'm being honest.

It was honestly a revelation that God was putting this on my mind and heart while being fed by so many amazing women who love God at the conference. And here's what I'm learning: Jesus came to give us an abundant life, but we have to allow Him to not only cleanse our stains but heal our wounds. We have to stop inspecting them, replaying them, defining ourselves by them.

So today, I'm asking myself:

What stains am I still holding onto?

What wounds am I not letting Him heal?

What am I not letting Him wash away?

Maybe you need to ask yourself the same thing.

He's ready to make us whole, not just clean, but healed. The question is, are we ready to let go? That's where true freedom lives, in the surrender.