When you heal you let go of the past?

 

When you heal you let go of the past?

 

When I was younger, I was focused on problems I was facing at the time.  I had a hard time seeing beyond my current difficult situation.  The future did not have much of an appeal to me because I could not imagine how I could change my life.  I was in a challenging marriage and felt stuck and degraded.  I did not know how to pursue my dreams.  I had a business that I did not enjoy but did not know how to get out of it when I did not have a lot of time or money.  I had a small child and could not see how I could manage to improve my life with all I had going on. In my mind I was stuck.  It would take some years before I began to realize this was not actually the truth, but it was my truth at the time, because I believed I was not able to change. 

I remember thinking “what will my life look like in 5 years from now?” I did not know at the time that I was the one who would determine that. I was stuck in my awful life and I did not realize it at the time, but I had others who were supporting me to stay this way because they too were stuck in a mental jail cell. I remember being praying and trying to find an answer to help me change my life. I thought that if I just endured and kept trying to love and push through, I would find a solution to my dilemma.  But I started realizing that I made a choice to remain as I was or to make some uncomfortable changes.  I also began to realize that what I was experiencing was no longer working for me.  Meaning something inside of me started to change and I began to see that I had value.  That possibly, I could accomplish my dreams.  I began to change in my perception of myself.

When in the previous times I had always felt inferior to those I was around, I started to think maybe that was a lie I had been telling myself.  I had also started reading a great book called “As a man thinketh” by James Allen.  This book began to make me realize that what I was thinking was being played out in my day-to-day life. I had grown up feeling insignificant because of having been raised in a home where we had some challenges.  My dad was an alcoholic and my mother was left raising four kids on her own.  And this environment caused me to see myself as not having much value.  So, from an early age my choices were rooted in this belief that I was not good enough and it would take years before this mental patten would finally begin to break and I would heal.

Because one must heal from a life lived from a perspective of insignificance.  When we are making choices from this point of view, we seldom make healthy and wise choices.  What we are really doing is looking to fill this unfulfilled need and since of lack.  Our choices are often made in our attempts to gain acceptance and love.  When we do not feel loved or accepted, we try to find it in self destructive ways, which further support our feelings of inferiority.

So here I am years later, and I no longer have an attachment to the past and the pain I once was experiencing.  The past is no longer rolling around in my mind anymore. I have moved on and let go of the negative things I have experienced.  My life is no longer filled with thoughts like “what will my life look like in 5 years” in a dreadful way.  I now know that I am the one who can choice how to live my life. I can choose how to respond to any given situation in life be it for good or bad.  I have it in my power to go after and achieve the things in my life I want.  I can not always control what goes on around me and what others do nor is it my job to “control” others, but I can control myself and make choices today that will positively affect my tomorrow.

This was a process for me, and I can look back now and see I needed those challenges to help me grow and change and learn.  I had and certainly still have, some lessons I needed to learn for me to heal properly.  I am now grateful for what I have been through and thank God for being with me all the way and not being easy to give in when I would plead and pray.  He knows we need to make it through hard times to grow, mature and heal.  So, to anyone sitting amid a hard time in your life, know that you did not get there by accident. Take responsibility for the choices you made that got you to this point in life but know that you can now make new choices to improve your life.  Do not be hard on yourself you were doing the best you could. Know that you can change but you must first realize there are some lies you can no longer stand for.  The lies that tell you, you have no value, that you can’t change, that it’s too hard, etc.  It is in your power to stop believing the lies and that it may take some time and your own unique process to heal, grow and change.  BUT you can change, and you can create the life you want to live. You might not be able to control others, but you can control your own reactions to life. So, go out and make new choices even when they feel uncomfortable and when they scare you.  Just think you could actually live the life you have always wanted to. We make choice that reflect what we think about.  So go make wise and loving choices.