I took the scenic route home from my weekend with the girls. I decided to stop and take pictures of an old covered bridge. I think about stopping all the time, but I never do. It’s just so romantic. Historical. Comforting. A reminder of how things used to be. Just beautiful.

I took a bunch of pictures of the outside and was in awe. But as I walked up the gravel road to the inside of the bridge, my heart dropped. The inside of the bridge is covered with graffiti. There would have been nothing inspiring or romantic about those pictures. The inside of the bridge was just ugly. Ugly, abused, and neglected. So I didn’t take any pictures. I focused on the outside and then I just moved on.

I wish I would have taken a picture. I almost wish that I would have only taken pictures of the inside.

Because that’s what I do here.

The unattractive grimy interior? That’s what I show you all. I expose the things about me that I want to change – the doubt, the self-destruction, the pain. The parts of myself that I don’t want to admit to myself, more or less share. But I point it out. I call attention to it. I acknowledge what doesn’t need to be there and I scrub it off. The graffiti. The ugly words. The ugly pictures. The things that are just obtrusive and distract from the inherent beauty. Sometimes it takes multiple scrubbings (similar to the analogy of having to change the same flat tire over and over again). But I’m still scrubbing. I’m not giving up. I’m not letting my exterior hide my flawed interior. I’m working through it. I’m going to become all that I already am. It’s just gonna take a lot of elbow grease.

I am so thankful for my little blog. I am so thankful that I have a place to air and wash my dirty laundry – a place to help me realize who I am and challenge me to do what I need to do to be the best version of me. Somewhere to record my efforts at scrubbing out all the ugly.

I am still scrubbing. And every little bit will add up. I’ll get there, my friends.