What's hiding under your bed?

This is not a post about monsters. Or at least not the typical kind that hide under the bed.

Last month Devin caught a cold. It was miserable but didn't last long, except his cough. And that, I realized a couple weeks ago, should really be gone after a month and a half. In fact, I thought back and remembered that he'd had a bit of a dry cough before he ever got sick. And then I got sick. And while we were in the middle of eating a SUPER clean diet, that didn't seem quite right. Then I found the mold.

First, I noticed there was mold up the corners of our room and around the windows. We had someone come look. While he went through the problem (and potential solution), he shined his flashlight under my bed and had me take a look. We had a bit of storage under there, and it was all COVERED in mold. Of course I was sick! I'd been spending hours every night sleeping above a bed of nasty mold. To make matters worse, Brad informed me the next morning there was mold on his shoes. So, we spent the entire weekend cleaning every piece of clothing we own, and wiping down our closets and bathroom (and of course, everything under the bed and in our room).

I started thinking back to a point in time when I started to notice a smell that was different. But it wasn't clearly a moldy or mildewy smell to me. It just smelled like "apartment". That smell that dwellings take on when they've been lived in, smoked in, cleaned, painted, recarpeted, lived in, etc. I didn't think it smelled that way when we moved in, and I didn't think it was something we had done. But I thought maybe we just needed to have the windows open a little more or something.

As we went through this cleaning process, I kept thinking back to that smell. I noticed something was off, but I dismissed it and just moved on. Now, months later we've paid the price in a couple of different ways. We will survive, and life will go on. But I thought about the ways we do this in our day-to-day life. Sometimes things get a little "off" in our relationships, our jobs, our personal lives, and we just keep going, assuming it will be fine, until one day we realize it's really not and something drastic is required to get things back on track.

I recently stood by while a giant wedge was placed in the friendship of two of my closest friends. And in some ways I contributed to it. What kills me is knowing there were moments something was "off", and I could have done something about it. I didn't want to get in the middle, and ended up waiting far too long to step in and help make things right. I hope someday they still will be right. But either way, it was a definite lesson in taking action when it counts.

Marriage became a scary prospect for me as I got old enough to see marriages fail, and covenants get broken. I realized that my husband's choices would impact me wholly and completely once I joined my life to his. Not only that, but I would be responsible for children who would grow up and make mistakes, and sometimes break my heart. I found comfort in the knowledge that just like mold, broken families grow with neglect and without taking the proper precautions. And when problems start to come up, it's possible to make things right early. It's possible to fix things before they are completely broken. There are no guarantees in life, but if I stay close to the spirit and to those I love, and I listen and watch, I can recognize those opportunities to make things right before they are beyond repair.