It keeps running through my mind - "Take up your cross and follow me." And I see myself standing over the essence of my failures and short comings, standing in their muck, stuck in their mire, looking longingly backwards for a point in the distance where they weren't a part of my life. Thinking if I go back I could go on. Pointless.

"Take up your cross and follow me." I think I've not really heard those words right over the years. Because now I am thinking ... "Pick up that mess, now isn't the time to deal with it. Come along, we have work to do, that stuff will be sorted out along the way." It is a call to action. It is a call to focus away from ourselves. We can't go back. Staying put is a lousy option. But moving forward, even with the mess in tow, is the process by which we are healed.