Sure, we have regrets – the kick-me-in-the-butt kind of regrets, the shoot-me-now-please kind of regrets, the missed-opportunity-what-a-dingbat-I-was regrets, the opened-my-stupid-mouth kind of regrets. Who doesn’t?
We have sad memories of wrongs, real or perceived, done to us.
We’ve got drawers full of memories.
Have you noticed, the top drawers of memory are usually filled with dark socks, and they’re the first drawers we open in the morning. Easy to get stuck wearing the same ideas, and rehashing the same memories.
Like Jesus, we try resurrecting our Lazarus-memories from the grave, but the memories we raise mostly stink – Jesus raised Lazarus to life, but our memories are best left in the grave of time.
How to deal with a memory that won’t let go?
Face it for what it is: it’s ugly, smelly and dysfunctional.
Confess it (your share in it).
Then give it up to God with deep and consistent surrender, trusting the promise of God to be at work in all things for good.
Then get on with the rest of your life. Put the car in gear, head forward, because the windshield to see where you’re going is a whole lot larger than the rearview mirror.
By God’s grace, there’s always a new adventure just around the corner –
a new person to meet, a new book to read, a new faith-dimension to explore, another prayer to lift up, and always Sunday in God’s House.And on the deepest level of all, heaven … something I cannot conceive of right now, but the essential promise of Jesus – the journey never ends. There’s always one more adventure ahead of us.
Travel well my friends … wave goodbye to the best and the worst; let God deal with all the unresolved stuff of life. God does a far better job it then we ever could. In the end, I pray, we will lay our heads down one last time, and awaken in the bright and warm light of God. The journey never ends!
