In the last few days I have repeatedly been reminded that things are not always as they seem. Earlier in my blogging attempts I posted a really cute story I named ‘A mouse in the house!’ This morning a friend emailed this story to me. Now as I had just sat down from carpet cleaning, a chore I know everyone looks forward to. I thought to myself how life and the story related to the carpet cleaning and a few other things I had run into over the last few days.

One of the homes my daughter lived in had a carpet that was very badly stained in one area. She told me after working on it for quite some time that no matter how she worked on it, nor how clean it became within a matter or hours it would just be ugly again and she had no idea how to fix it. I was reminded of this, early this morning, as I went about cleaning the stains from my carpet and I thought how like life this is. In a carpet, as with life, you have several layers to contend with. Yet generally we only deal with that which can be seen, not that which is the problem.

Now a carpet, like life, has many layers. It all depends on the age, thickness, how it was laid, and the quality (worth) of the carpet. But usually there are at least 2 to 3 layers and then there is the flooring, which is similar to the soul. All these things need to be accounted for when trying to remove old stains. If you have a wood base you need to be careful not to get it too wet as the flooring can warp. In the spiritual realm this would be a person who is already traumatized, usually severely traumatized, etc. If your base is concrete there is very little that will harm it and you can generally treat the carpet without any residual harm, except to the material of the carpet itself. This might relate to a person who has had a relatively good life and has few deep wounds, but has decided to do some personal housecleaning.

Now the problem is that stains do not generally sit on top where they can be seen. They are absorbed into the very fabric and sometimes the flooring, as in wood. And the removal of these stains takes a very long time to remove, as you must wet them and let them dry between cleanings. This is because as they dry the gunk in the bottom lining and the flooring is pulled upwards to the top material. How long it takes to clean the carpet depends on how much dried-on-gunk you have under the surface, how long it has been there, and how often you attend to the stain.

With concrete base the gunk goes down and spreads out covering a larger area but is not absorbed by the flooring only the surface materials. This makes clean up much faster and easier, as you can pour hot water directly on the spot and suck it up into a rug cleaner with very little harm, except like previously stated to the carpet material. This is more like a bruise on the skin as it covers a large area but is easily fixed with a little time and effort.

The person who has lead a relatively easy life with very few traumas along the way only needs to have a willing ear, a good drunk or a good psychologists and they are on the road to health. The person who has been repeatedly traumatized, even if those trauma’s are seemingly small and insignificant to others, needs to be treated thoughtfully, consistently, and gently in order not to do more damage then has already been done to their scared soul. It is a known fact that the reason two people can go through the same experience and react differently is because those who are diagnosed with PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder) are people who, in childhood, have already been predisposed. They already expect the worse; they are already high strung… ‘they are a major trauma waiting to happen’!

Now if you know someone who falls into one of these scenarios it may help you to understand that not everyone is as easy to figure out as carpeting. With carpeting you only need to know the facts to fix the problem. With people the facts are not as easy to find or to fix but this will at least help you to understand why one person is easily healed while another may not be.

Now go back to the mouse, read the story and ask yourself ‘how many ways could the mouse have traveled’:

If he were never traumatized in the past maybe he sat down and laughed at the silliness of his friends and their demise? Or if slightly traumatized maybe he shook his head and got drunk because his silly stupid friends were so inconsiderate of his needs and then they were all slaughtered. Or maybe he was really traumatized and he just sat down in his hole starring out unable to move from his hole as everyone begin to die, after all they didn’t listen the first time what could he possibly do for them now. Or maybe he was severely traumatized and died of a broken heart because all his friends were now gone.

My point is everyone, like carpeting, has different layers, different needs and different healing processes. The carpet cleaner, ‘psychologist’ needs to be capable of handling each particular situation and regrettably not all are. Many of them are themselves traumatized, or inexperienced and unable to give the treatment that is needed in certain circumstances. Do not stop looking for help just because one or two specialists tell you a stain is not removable. Continue to look because it has been my experience that no matter how stained we are there is always a solution.

And remember this each time you treat the stain, you are treating a new and different stain (situation). That is because each time you treat a stain it becomes less of what it was and more of what it is. And if you don’t see the difference you may damage the material by treating it to harshly or to softly and then the stain will not ever be removed or the fabric could be damaged.

Thanks for listening and I pray for those of you who are removing past stains. It has been a very long hard road for me to get to where I am today and I often wish I had had someone to talk to who understood. But now I understand that maybe my experiences would have been different then. I also wish I had understood this and PTSD many years ago so that I could have handled my marriage and other affairs differently then I did.

My parents, most of their friends, my husband and definitely his family and a large lot of my friends all had PTSD in one form or another. It is a fact that you tend to draw to you that which is familiar whether you want it or not until you learn how to delete or change the stains.

I am not yet PTSD free but I am working on it. I would like to encourage all those who are to not ever give up as there is an answer if you only continue to treat each and every stain. 

Many Blessings to those of you who are looking for healing. 

----

A Mouse in the House
This is ever so true, read it carefully as it becomes a bit mundane but clears up in the end. Are you the mouse or are you the other barn animals?

Mouse Story ...
A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package.
"What food might this contain?" The mouse wondered - he was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap.
Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning.
"There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"
The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, "Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it."
The mouse turned to the pig and told him, "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"
The pig sympathized, but said, "I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured you are in my prayers."
The mouse turned to the cow and said, "There is a mousetrap in the house!There is a mousetrap in the house!"
The cow said, "Wow, Mr. Mouse. I'm sorry for you, but it's no skin off my nose."
So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer's mousetrap-- alone.
That very night a sound was heard throughout the house -- like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey.
The farmer's wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught.
The snake bit the farmer's wife.

The farmer rushed her to the hospital and she returned home with a fever.

Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup's main ingredient.
But his wife's sickness continued, so friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig.
The farmer's wife did not get well; she died.

So many people came for her funeral, the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them.
The mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness.
So, the next time you hear someone is facing a problem and think it doesn't concern you, remember -- when one of us is threatened, we are all at risk.
We are all involved in this journey called life.

We must keep an eye out for one another and make an extra effort to encourage one another.

REMEMBER:

EACH OF US IS A VITAL THREAD IN ANOTHER PERSON'S TAPESTRY; OUR LIVES ARE WOVEN TOGETHER FOR A REASON.

 

One of the best things to hold onto in this world is a friend .