…just burn it all and start over!

A friend of mine recently admitted to a moral lapse.  There was a lot of shrapnel from his confession.  He told me that as part of his healing he wrote down as many of his past transgressions as he could recall and then burned the list.

Im on a retreat for a few days this week.  Ive considered writing out and burning my own list.   But as attractive as that sounds to incinerate my past and forget it ever happened…if Im honest with myself…the repress-and –deny strategy has never worked well for me.

Ive been reading a book by Mark McMinn.  He discusses that our greatest physical, emotional, and spiritual health comes from choosing to remember rather than forgetting.  Inviting God to be with us in our pain.

Its through remembering our pain and its consequences that we:

–       better understand our need for God through others around us

–       have the opportunity to see God in others because of our weakness

–       realize our inability to control the circumstances of life

–       develop a capacity to learn from the past as we move to the future

–       have an awareness of God’s constant grace and mercy.

“True gratitude embraces all of life:  the good and the bad, the joyful and the painful, the holy and the not so holy.  We do this because we become aware of God’s life, God’s presence in the middle of all that happens.”  – Henri Nouwen.

In Isaiah 43:15-17 God reminds the Israelites of who He is by reminding them of what He has done.  But then in :18-19 He says to forget those things because He is going to do something new and even better.

If we burn our list we destroy a point of reference.  We forget where we have been.  We forget what He has brought us through in the past.  And when He tells us He is about to do something greater we lose the point of comparison.

Lord help me to remember, not forget, my pain so that I may know more fully Your healing.