God, has it taken four years? Is that why this is all coming up again? How much things have changed. I look back on the photos of when the Carters visited – I remember how chewed up I was inside. I can see it through my face. How confused I was. I wanted to shut out the world and was grasping desperately at the moment. What – how much did it show? How I want to go back and do some things differently.
Am I so fixated in the past still? I look at me now – how much more have you done.
I have that one thing to be thankful for – that he saw the potential no one else saw – somehow, and it gave me hope.
Would I still be the same old me otherwise?
So maybe you’re showing me again how to let things lie in their rightful place. To not force them to a backburner, or feel horrible thinking I have to forget. Those chapters of my life need to close. To be visible but not stirred. God, experience should be that shouldn’t it? The past, the past?
In hindsight, I guess leaving – You chose the right moment for me.
Why can I remember things like that so clearly – remember feeling?
I don’t know why I”m remembering all this stuff. What am I still holding on to?
Tradition girl, set in ways, holding too tightly, missing the now.
Fix me Lord, Piece me back together, a newer design not the same old same old.
Create in me a pure heart God and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
I understand.
I wish this wasn’t happening – is this a step towards complete?
What did I distort along the way?
Part of the road to better?
This is going back and cleaning the mess, dealing with it is what I’ve tried to do before, that and ignore it.
You want it.
Have it.
Your way is better.
“Father, I want to know Thee, but my coward heart fears to give up its toys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide from Thee the terror of the parting. I come trembling, but I do come. Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that Thou mayest enter avid dwell there without a rival. Then shalt Thou make the place of Thy feet glorious. Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for Thyself wilt be the light of it, and there shall be no night there.”
-A. W Tozer (The Pursuit of Godliness)
I’m not so sure that it is holding on to something, as you may think. I think there’s a place for re-living some of the past, revisiting old hurts, recounting the experiences. I think it’s a part of growing, a part of maturing and determining our own, separate, identity. It’s important to be able to go over it all again, after time. Sure, it may still hurt, it may still cause unease. But time brings understanding and a new perspective; time brings about wisdom. Going back over the times and circumstances is all part of growing and changing into the people we are supposed to be.