What is Stored in your Storehouse?

I've been thinking about the things we carry inside us. The things nobody can see until, usually at the most inconvenient moment, they find their way out. Anger, frustration, bitterness, envy, spite, resentment, jealousy, pride, suspicion, unforgiveness, disappointment, hatred, impatience, guilt, and shame. Even the need to be right, to be recognised, to be understood, or to make someone else realise just how badly they've hurt us. We all have our list, and some of us have been adding to it for years.

The heart is a storehouse. We put things in there, some deliberately and others almost without noticing. A hurtful remark, a betrayal, a disappointment, something someone did to us that we simply can't forget. Because it hurt, we keep it. We tell ourselves we keep it because it matters, because we need to remember, or because remembering will protect us from allowing the same thing to happen again. But there's a difference between remembering something and carrying it.

I know this because I've spent a great deal of time looking backwards. I've replayed things that happened years ago, wondered what I could've said differently, what I should've done, why someone behaved as they did, and whether I could somehow have changed the outcome. The mind's remarkably creative when it's given an old wound to work on. It can return to the same conversation hundreds of times and produce a different ending every time. Of course, none of those endings changes what actually happened.

Perhaps you know what I mean. Someone hurts you, and the hurt's real. You're angry. You're disappointed. You may even have every reason to be angry and disappointed. But then something happens that we don't always notice. The person who hurt you goes on living. They get up the next morning, have their coffee, go to work, make plans, laugh with their friends, and continue with their lives. Meanwhile, you're still carrying something they may not even remember doing.

They may've forgotten the words they said. They may've forgotten the incident altogether. They may not even know that you're still having conversations with them in your head. Yet they've taken up residence in your storehouse, and you continue to give them space there.

That's where we need to pause. Someone else may be responsible for what they did to you, but they can't be responsible for everything you allow that experience to become within you. They may've caused the wound, but they didn't necessarily put the bitterness there. They may've disappointed you, but they didn't necessarily put the resentment there. They may've treated you badly, but at some point, you have to ask yourself what you're doing with what they did.

That's not an easy question because it gives some responsibility back to us. It's much easier to say, "I'm angry because of what they did." And perhaps that's true. But how long will you remain angry? How many times will you tell the story? How many years will you carry the same disappointment? How much of your present life are you willing to give to something that happened in your past?

I'm not suggesting that we simply forget. Some things can't be forgotten, and perhaps they shouldn't be. There are lessons in what happens to us. There are boundaries we learn to establish. There are people we learn not to trust again. Experiences change us permanently. Forgiveness doesn't mean pretending that something didn't happen, and it certainly doesn't mean allowing someone who hurt you to hurt you again.

Perhaps forgiveness is simply deciding that you're no longer willing to carry the weight of what someone else did.

And this is where the storehouse becomes important. What have you stored in yours? Have you stored the lesson, or the anger? The wisdom, or the bitterness? The experience, or the resentment? Have you kept what happened because it helped you grow, or because some part of you is still waiting for the person who hurt you to understand what they did?

There's a difference.

There comes a time when we have to clean out the storehouse. What happened mattered, but our lives also matter. We can't change what someone else did. We can't go back and remove the words, undo the betrayal, prevent the disappointment, or make another person behave differently. What we can do is decide what we'll allow to remain inside us.

That's where the choice begins.

I can be hurt without becoming hateful. I can be disappointed without becoming bitter. I can be angry without making anger my identity. I can recognise someone's wrongdoing without allowing their wrongdoing to determine who I become. I can acknowledge that something was unfair without spending the rest of my life trying to make the scales balance.

And perhaps most importantly, I can stop giving permanent residence to people who should've been temporary visitors in my life.

That doesn't happen overnight. I know that. We all have our cycles. Some days we think we've finally let something go, only to discover that it's still sitting quietly somewhere inside us. We open a door we thought we'd closed, and there it is again. That doesn't necessarily mean that we've failed. It simply means that there's more work to do.

I'm learning that healing isn't always about removing the past. Sometimes it's about changing the space the past occupies. The chapter remains, but it doesn't have to be the chapter I keep reading. What happened can remain part of my story without it becoming the whole story.

So perhaps the question we should ask ourselves isn't only, "Who hurt me?" and not even, "Why did they do it?". The quieter take on it is to ask, "What have I allowed that hurt to become inside me?"

There's a strange freedom in realising that I don't have to keep everything that's happened to me. Some things can be acknowledged and released. Some things can be forgiven. Some things can simply be put down. And some things can be turned into wisdom and left behind.

We all have a storehouse. We all put things into it. We are all responsible for what we choose to keep there. Eventually, what we store inside us finds its way out. It appears in our words, our reactions, our relationships, and in the way we see other people.

It's good to open the door every now and then and have a good look around. There may be things in there that once protected us but no longer serve us. There may be things we've carried for so long that we've forgotten we're carrying them. And there may be things we're finally ready to put down.

I'm learning that I don't have to carry yesterday simply because I lived it. I can keep the lesson. I can keep the memory. I can keep the wisdom. But I don't have to keep the poison.

The most important thing is that we heal from the past. Healing is not about forgetting what happened and pretending it didn't hurt. Healing is finally deciding that what happened won't have the final say in what happens within us.