Oust it!

Today I experienced something, a trivial something, that really clicked in my brain. I was walking down a hallway in my dorm for the seventh time this morning- this time to pick up my three weeks worth of laundry (don't judge) from the dryers. You see, the first through sixth times I walked down this particular hallway, it reeked of some sort of tuna/sweat/boy combination. I finally learned my lesson by this seventh trip and decided to hold my breath down the long hallway to avoid smelling the stench. But when I was almost all the way through, I ran out of breath and painfully took in another, just waiting for the tuna/sweat/boy smell to seep back into my nostrils once again. To my surprise, I took in some sort of flowery meadow scent. I was amazed. It was literally a breath of fresh air! It was then that I realized the connection between relationships and this moment. I've been burned, brokenhearted, and let down so many times in the past. By the end of last summer, I started to feel like nothing good would ever come out of a relationship. I guarded my heart that much tighter, closed myself off to any possibility. I began to learn my lesson and hold my breath with each potential guy that came along, thinking this time would be just as bad, if not worse, than the last walk down the hall. But sometimes, when you're forced to take in one last breath to get you through, you're surprised by the magnificence of it all- the sweet smells of patience, trust, and giving. When you hold God's hand and take that leap of faith, you begin to see that the next trip is nothing you expected but everything and more you could have imagined or hoped for. Whoever sprayed the hallway down must have used Oust, because not a single trace of tuna/sweat/boy was left. It invaded the space, and soon after, I couldn't even remember the old stench. Everything had been erased. God has put the Oust in my life to get rid of the old things and make space for new things, for new thoughts and feelings and emotions. All I had to do was take a breath.
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I'll leave you with a (longish but awesomeish) quote from one of my favorite novels, titled Wasteland.
"Nothing happened. And everything did. Your whole life you can be told something is wrong and so you believe it. Why should you question it? But then slowly seeds are planted inside of you, one by one, by a touch or a look or a day skateboarding in a park, and they start to unfurl uncurl little green shoots and they start to burst out of old hulls shells and they start to sprout. And pretty soon there are so many of them. They are named Love and Trust and Kindness and Joy and Desire and Wonder and Spirit and Soulmate. They grow into a garden so dense and thick that it starts to invade your brain where the old things you were once told are dying. By the time this garden reaches your brain the old things are dead. They make no sense. The logic of the seeds sprouted inside of you is the only real thing."