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I used to love those quizzes in Seventeen Magazine and YM and all those other teenie bopper magazines that would tell you what your idea career was and whether or not he has a crush on you.  Whenever my monthly subscription would come in the mail, I would run for the mailbox, and I would flip right to those quizzes.

I don’t really read magazines anymore.  (I’m not sure how many people really do.)  But as my tastes changed from Tiger Beat to Teen to Seventeen to Cosmo, there was always one piece of advice hidden within the articles that would confuse me.  They would tell you to purge your life of negative influences.  Let go of toxic friendships.  Toss away the Debbie Downers.

And yea, it always confused me.  I always believed we were called to love everybody.  And I guess I had a hard time believing that I deserved to cut those influences out of my life.  I felt stuck with whomever crossed my path.  To break off a relationship would be to act uncharitably.  To withhold forgiveness.  To be smug.

And then something funny happened.  Someone purged me out of their life.  This was years ago, and it was a move that absolutely and totally and completely needed to happen for both of our sake’s, but it changed the way I looked at relationships.  I realized that even once strong relationships can be broken and that they don’t necessarily need to be fixed.  Sometimes people are better off apart.  It doesn’t mean you lack forgiveness.  Forgiveness and grace can be showered upon the person from afar.  Reconciliation and forgiveness are not the same things.

That was a long term friendship.  It was a relationship I had maintained for years.  I learned a lot from that relationship, and I’m glad I was a part of it even though it turned wretched.  But the absolute greatest thing I learned from it was that relationships can end.

I am a lucky girl.  I grew up in an amazing family, all of whom I am still very close to.  And now I have created my own amazing family.  We are so close that I don’t even know what an empty lap feels like!  But I grew up loved and secure in a peaceful home.  And I still get those same feelings from my family now.

And since I did come from a secure family, I think it is hard to understand the whole idea of purging negativity from your life.  Because I never really experienced much of it.

But as an adult, I have come to learn something.  A house is built of walls.  There’s wood and plaster and dry wall.  They keep the elements out and the warmth in.  But a home is also made of walls.  But they are different walls.  The walls of a home are the arms that hold everyone in.  They are the acceptance that goes on within a home.  The forgiveness that allows us to keep moving forward.  The laughter that makes it worth staying in, and the love that ties it all together.  But those arms also need to keep things out.  Things like worry and uncertainty and hostile influences and hostile judges.  Anything or any person that undermines the integrity of the home’s walls absolutely must be kept out.  Otherwise the home would fall just as a house would fall if someone took a torch to the structure.

I’ve gushed written before about how I love my house.  But I love my home even more.  And if we want it to stay strong, we need to keep it strong and protect it from the harsh forces that wish to penetrate it.

Forgiveness is divine.  It belongs as the foundation of our home.  But reconciliation sometimes needs to stand outside.