How many times have you made the mistake of putting an overripe banana next to another food item like a sandwich or a cookie only to have everything end up tasting like the nasty banana?
Sometimes life can be like a bad banana. Getting too close to toxic things, people, environments can just make everything else taste bad. When we allow ourselves to stay in toxic relationships, or unhealthy environments we may end up becoming a little rotten ourselves. We may, by allowing the situation to remain in our lives, unknowingly taint ourselves by that destructive connection.
Like that bad banana we from time to time have experiences when something, or more often someone we encounter causes damage to our lives and we need to distance ourselves from these harmful effects. There is nothing shameful or wrong with distancing ourselves from hurtful environments or toxic relationships. We should never feel forced to keeping something damaging in our lives. Like the rotten banana if we don’t want a person or situation to further damage or taint us we need to create distance.
That distance can give us the freedom to breathe deeply, to find peace and allow the loving arms of the Savior to reach towards us. We gain freedom when we distance ourselves enough to finally recognize the destructive presence and be thankful for its absence.
We need to find the place where we love ourselves enough to finally put our needs and emotional health ahead of the guilt that keeps us frozen in an unhealthy relationship or situation.
May we ever be brave enough to stay away from the “bad bananas” when we encounter them, be strong enough to remove the ones that are tainting the joy and beauty in our lives, and be wise enough to not allow those bananas we have left behind leave unhealthy traces and bad tastes in our mouths.
Photo by Boudewijn Huysmans on Unsplash
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