Move Along

I cleaned my room today.  That makes me sound like I'm a six-year-old, I know, but that was my major accomplishment today.  When I came back from college, my dorm threw up in my room, and it has been an intimidating feat for the past month or so...in fact, it was so overwhelming, I haven't touched it until today.  (Cue the stunned gasp)

So, as I was fumbling through the little knickknacks, I stumbled upon several things that I suppose you could say I had "hidden" in my room.  Stuffed animals given to me by friends who for one reason or another I no longer talk to were buried under random throw blankets.  A broken glass butterfly that a friend had given me in 4th grade was placed in a box, which was thrown into a basket, and then covered with other pieces of jewelry--I guess I had felt bad about accidentally breaking it.  Probably the most heart-wrenching was a crumbled piece of paper with a poem written on it from an ex-boyfriend, which I had tucked away in the back corner of a cupboard after the breakup years ago.  There were so many tiny little things that I hid away so that I could pretend it wasn't real--like it never really happened.  If I didn't see them, maybe I wouldn't be reminded of their existence.  Erase a couple of memories.  No biggie.  Until you start cleaning them out.

I spent the better half of two hours finding these little material-based memories and reliving what I had tucked away.  Yeah, yeah, now I sound more like a Stephen King novel than a six-year-old, but bear with me:  how many times do we dwell on the past?  I mean, it's toxic!  We hold on like we're sinking in quicksand, and there's the convenient vine right there in arm's reach, pretending to be our saving grace.  It's not until we let go that we realize the quicksand was nothing more than a sandbox.

Thus saith Sara:  God gave us the ability to remember, so that we would not forget the lessons we learn from the experiences we face.  He gave us the ability to learn from those experiences so that we could move on with our lives.  When we let our past define, demoralize, and dictate us (alliteration is underrated), we are placing a box around God, saying, "You're not enough, Lord."  If anything, a past full of regrets and memories we would rather throw away should be shouting, "I'm not enough without You, Lord."

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.  Hebrews 12:1-2

“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

Isaiah 43:18-19

I am confident that the same God who was able to completely change the life of Paul--a man with a past full of killing Christians--and who was willing to deliver a land with a track record of turning their back on the Him time and time again, can (and will) do the same in anyone who is willing to turn to Christ.  

So, I now have a box full of memories which will be sold in the next garage sale.  It's not that I want to forget the past, but that I have simply taken from these experiences all that I can, and now it's time to give it up and move along.