The Past is in the Past

“I wouldn’t take back a moment, not one miserable moment.”

- Into the Fire, a song by Asking Alexandria

The past is something that everyone has their own memory of. For some it is a time of great achievements, glory, and fun times, while others have mixed feelings of their past, littered with both good and bad times, easy and hard. On the other hand, there are some who feel as though their past was nothing but horrible times, always feeling down, and never feeling right. They feel as though their life was a mistake, that no one loves them. These are the three categories someone can place themselves in. Where do you sit? We have all had moments where we have done something wrong or made a wrong choice. I want my story to be a source of comfort for those that have been there, or those currently there. My goal is for you, the reader, or the one you pass it to, to know this: While there is no erasing your horrible past, you can have a positive attitude about it and find comfort that there is someone who would not send us into them without benefit in the end. God has always had out best interests in mind. In Romans, we see Paul assure us of this. “And we know the all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called according to His purpose.” He loves more abundantly and unconditionally than anyone ever could (Jeremiah 31:3).

Have you had hard times in your life? What if there was a message in those hard times? What if someone was trying to tell you something in your pain? There is! God will use hard times in our lives to show us something. We all would like to think that our “all-loving” God would never send storms our way because that is not “real love.” Truth is, the same God that sends His love is the same God that sends His storms. And the same God that send His storms is the same God that will provide a way out of them. Like in the story of Jonah, where he was disobeying God’s direct command to witness to the people of Nineveh by running in the literal opposite direction! God sent a storm as a way to get Jonah back on track... That and a big fish. While we may not be deliberately disobeying God’s command in doing something, we all need a storm to come our way to wake us up to what we are doing wrong sooner or later. True love can be found in correctional love. When a kid disobeys their father and runs into the street and is almost hit by a car, the father does not just let it happen hoping he will learn his lesson. No, the father runs after his child, saves him from the danger of his disobedience, and also sits him down to correct him on his wrong action (many have experienced that in the form of a “spanking.”) That is a good picture of God and us. God is running after his children to save them from a bigger harm by giving them a smaller pain to deal with.

Back to the point of past experiences, we cannot avoid the hard times that come our way, we may only delay them for a while. But these hard times do not have to be our end. We can, and will survive the hard times we face if we only believe that there is something greater ahead! When that time comes, those things become our past. Many prefer to just forget the past because they find too much pain in reliving it that they feel it is better to act as though it never happened. One of the greatest lessons I have learned from my hard past experiences is sitting down and reliving them. Every moment, every hard time, every trespass, every lie told, and every single bit of pain I felt during those times. I use them as my motivation to move past them and grow from the lessons learned. There is a saying that tells us that every experience in life, every person, is for either a blessing or lesson. It is up to us to decide which it is. Some of my past experiences have been for the better. I have enjoyed so many blessings from them, but not all. There have been some that were for me to learn lessons from. The lyrics above talk about this idea of looking back on our hard times in life. The commentary of the song is where the idea for this post comes from. I have had my share of hard times, but when I look back at them, I realize that I made mistakes that caused them. I have felt trespass, been lied to, and many other things. But the amazing thing of going through that experience is that I learned things from them. The biggest was realizing just how dependent I need to be on God, His love, and His help for everything. That experience strengthened me in ways that no other could have. My point? That was not the end for me, my past is in my past and now I move on freely from it. I move on, not forgetting my past, but embracing it. If there is one thing that I have realized through it all, it is this: I wouldn’t take back a moment not one miserable moment, because in the end, they are all for my good. Will you do the same?

“For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”

– Romans 15:4