At Peace With The Past

Trips down memory lane hold special significance. They encapsulate a richness of experience in the identity of who we once were; part of who we’ve now become. As we journey there, to a geographical place, or to a place in our minds—a thought; an emotion—instant is the transport into something both real and surreal.

We are situated there, in the present, yet our hearts reside on salubrious vacation—completely free of charge. The sort of gift therefore enjoyed is one requisite in accepting, even glorying in, the past.

Do this—accept our formation—and a blessed access gate into our souls is opened. We can freely explore.

The Road to Acceptance

Sense is made in accepting our pasts in the cognition that bliss-upon-retrospection is disallowed, and permanently out of grasp, until we take that past and understand its role in the forming of the person we are, today.

Some roads, however, need to be shut down, or we, for the time being, don’t go there—where ‘there’ is bristling with untold pain.

These dangerous roads are the exception; there is a road to acceptance in these situations, but only by the power and grace of God, with expert, trusted counsel to guide us, and with the will charged to tackle a nemesis.

It’s about here we acknowledge that, when we’ve surrendered our pasts, God is abundantly able to empower and equip us with the grace to forgive. Such power can only be described as miraculous, for there is nothing we can do, alone, to affect it.

Still, for our problems of the past, we are the only ones who can decide our treatment of them.

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Otherwise, the road to acceptance is paved by a simple courage to take, in faith, the past as the past; always understanding, in the case of painful memories, the actors in our lives back then had their own issues.

Lovely Is The Vista At The Cherished Destination

If the past holds no fears for us, there’s no barrier to accessing the limitless network of destinations that inhabit our minds, as memories; from the vast bank of common, everyday experiences.

Each of those everyday experiences, snapshots of wonder, whilst not perfectly redeemable, proves how rich our lives have been. And it’s not as if video footage can even come close to the images the mind can paint.

Being at peace with our pasts is access to joyous moments in the present as we allow the pioneering mind the space to relive the autobiographical movies of our lives. Here we recall something never more personal or meaningful. There is God’s blessing.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.