Getting Past Your Past

The forty-something year old man sits at his desk. He stares at the spreadsheet on his computer. The numbers he is crunching don’t look much different than they looked yesterday. He and his wife get along. Some of the passion from early in the relationship seems to be missing, but it could be worse. The kids are great, but they are growing up so fast. Life is usually busy, sometimes stressful, and passes by like an hourglass stuck to a table. Meanwhile, he is staring at a spreadsheet on his computer.

The woman in her mid twenties is walking around the lake. Her iPod blasts country music. She politely smiles at the people riding their bikes, pushing their jogging strollers, and walking their dogs. Her smile is more a surface smile. Inside she isn’t all that happy. She works in marketing and loves her job. She enjoys hanging out with her friends. Those things aren’t the problem. She walks faster, turns the music up louder, and keeps cranking out those smiles. 

As the man stares at his computer, he goes back a decade or so to a time in his life when he was addicted to alcohol. With deep regret he remembers the days and nights he wasn’t home with his wife and kids. Even if he was home, he still has a lot to regret. He beats himself up over the night he was arrested for driving with too much liquor in his system. He wishes he could have found a more constructive way to deal with stress than a short-term reprieve of a few shots of whiskey and lots of beer. He is clean now and has been for some time, but the past has a tight stranglehold on him and the opponent’s grip is not getting any looser. He keeps staring at that spreadsheet. 

As the woman continues around the lake she looks at her index finger on her left hand. It is empty. A ring was on the finger for ten months—about five years ago. It was shiny and beautiful. It represented faith, hope, and love. She was engaged. Life was perfect. The wedding date was set. Then one day, he told her they needed to postpone the wedding. He had some excuse about this being a really busy year with his job. She believed him and supported him. A few months later he broke it off and broke her heart. To make things worse, a year later he married another woman. They say time heals all wounds. It’s been five years and she ain’t there yet. 

The man’s office and the woman’s lake are less than a mile apart. He is 45 and she is 25. Their lives are much different, but the issue they need to deal with is the same: getting past their past. They, and pretty much everybody else they know, need to heal from pain inflicted by others and by self. Things like forgiveness, getting over our failures, and not letting others define us are the first and most important steps to contentment, fulfillment, satisfaction and joy.

The past: we can’t change a darn thing about it. We can learn from it: the good, the bad, and ugly. And, somehow, we have to put it behind us. Doing things such as this sure beats the alternative. 

I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead. –Philippians 3:13 

The best is yet to come… 

Craig