looking back, why?
March 26, 2010 | Family: Nurturing Family, Feelings: Intentional freedom
Houses crowded together. Small patches of brown grass sported mattresses and bags of trash instead of the flowers I once remembered. I snaked between parked cars lining both sides of the street. I braked, pausing to look at 7856 E. Latimer Place, the home I grew up in.
Was it really that small?
The red brick had been painted a pastel blue. A metal awning arched over the driveway. The grand Mimosa that once towered over the house from the back yard was absent.
There was Ms. King’s house. Just across the street. The house that once housed the grand dame of the neighborhood. The Kings even had a pop-up pool in the backyard. We staged plays on the patio, charging neighbors a nickel. I always obeyed Mrs. King, who could raise an arched eyebrow from her throne, a wheelchair that graced her thin body.
There was the Hill’s home. Strict Mrs. Hill whose kids seemed perfect, except for that time Tony threw a lawn dart in the air and it came down and pierced him in the face.
I passed Sheila Shay’s house, my funny rebellious friend who died in a car accident.
Funny, looking at your past as an adult. How different it all seems.
It’s why it’s so important, I believe, to cruise down the streets of your childhood as an adult, seeing things that loom so large, and were at one time, through a different perspective.
As I shared the topic of forgiveness two weeks ago at Hearts at Home, I walked with nearly 500 women over the two days through their past. Tears fell. Sometimes they braked, looking at an incident, an event, a person, fully. Seeing it for what it was, and where it fit now in their life. How it affected their relationships. How it kept them in prison, or perhaps kept the offender there though they had changed.
How sometimes it was so very wrong, wrong, wrong and yet how tragic if it is still holding us tightly to the past, though we live among those who love us best.
Why is it important to cruise past the events that you just can’t quite let go? Because looking at it from a new perspective puts in its place, and allows you to move in a new direction.
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I do this often Suzie. It’s allowed me the opportunity to put those things in their places and allowed me to forgive, it’s allowed me to heal. To grow. To love. To honor and glorify God.
Thank you for your encouragement and support.
March 26th, 2010 at 11:13 pmI do this often. Not because I am stuck in the past, but because I have to remind myself of how far God has brought me. Yes, God gets the credit because He is the only one that could bring me out on this side of my abusive childhood. He is the only one that could protect me and guide me to where I am now. He had a reason for doing it too. I’m still trying to find my place in this world, but I know God will use my past to help others and glorify Him.
March 29th, 2010 at 8:39 pmThank God for happy endings!
Jennifer
I am struggling with forgiving myself, because I am still talked about as if I am defined by my sins. I was in a relationship that ended in December, and I found out yesterday that my close friend used to want to punch me because of “how I was when I was with him..” she thought I treated him badly. She didn’t know me then, only knew him, and part of it I think is that she didn’t have the whole story. I also know that I don’t have to have it all together, and pretending like I do is almost a slap in the face to grace.
I don’t know how to change how I am in relationships. I have no desire to be in another relationship anytime soon. I was so hurt in the last one. I know God is changing my heart, I know regeneration is His job. It just hurts, because it caused me to lose relationships. It showed me how horrible I was then. It reminded me that I can’t be perfect, but that Christ has covered me and he is my justification, my high priest, and my king. God is changing me, but often I wonder how much I have really changed. I just want God, I just need Him. I am just confused.
April 1st, 2010 at 8:26 am