The past sometimes pays a return visit, along with heartache and regrets. Suddenly, Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda frame way too many memories. They are NOT useful tools for living in the moment, and living sober.
Maybe you can relate?
So, I am passing along a Face book post by Philip Yancey. It was a tonic, for cutting short an unhappy visit from the past. Here it is:
“How easily a life can become a litany of guilt and regret, a song that keeps echoing with the same chorus, with the inability to forgive ourselves.
How easily the life we didn’t live becomes the only life we prize.
How easily we are seduced by the fantasy that we are in control, that we were ever in control, that the things we could or should have done or said have the power, if only we had done or said them, to cure pain, to erase suffering, to vanish loss.
How easily we can cling to—worship—the choices we think we could or should have made….
“To forgive is to grieve—for what happened, for what didn’t happen—and to give up the need for a different past.” ~Edith Eva Eger
[BACKGROUND: Edith Eger, a Hungarian teenager, lost both her parents at Auschwitz. She was moved from there to Austria, and on May 4, 1945 an American soldier noticed her hand moving slightly amongst a number of dead bodies. He quickly summoned medical help and brought her back from the brink of death. She ultimately immigrated to the U.S. and became a psychologist.]
Reading this reminded me that acceptance, forgiveness, and living in the present are a better use of my day than wandering about in my past. It won’t give me a brighter future and it sure can’t guarantee a happier present!
Love in Christ,
Sober and Grateful
P.S. Something I wrote awhile back: Living with a Past Not in It.
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