A friend of mine is getting ready to move to a different location. She is going through everything in her house, deciding what she wants and what she doesn’t want. I don’t think she has an attic, but if she did, she’d be sorting through it, keeping, discarding.
Why can’t we do that with memories? Why can’t we just go through and discard what we don’t want and hang onto those that are priceless and dear? Why is that so very hard to do?
If you are like me, those bad memories that you wish you could forget and never think of again, keep rearing their ugly heads. “Look, you failed at this,” they hiss. “See how you missed the mark? Give up. There’s no use in trying.”
And those bright, shining memories? Well, they are as hard to hang onto as quicksilver. And, even with the nice thoughts, that mean old mental detractor intrudes and promises that was my shining moment, never to be repeated.
Failures, defeats, mistakes, grief, sins, ugliness, disappointments all are pitiful things and have no place in anybody’s house, not in the attic and certainly not in the foundation. They remind me of the foolish man in Scripture who built his house on the sand. Remember what happened when the storms came? Now, who would want to build a life on such unstable things?
Whereas, the other house, built on a solid foundation, stood firmly against the storms. But, that strong, positive base doesn’t just happen. It takes a great deal of work.
First, is deciding who to believe. Does it give me any sense of joy or hope to wallow in past defeats? Does it make me want to pick up my pen (or sit at the computer) and try once more to write? I’ve found that old, painful memories and dwelling on past failures are like chains or a heavy weight. They make me just want to curl up and go into hibernation.
My mother had a favorite saying. Anything negative or bad “should just slide off like water off a duck’s back.” Good advice.
Talk to that mean, hateful, intrusive memory. Telling it to take a hike and replacing bad memories with good is one way of letting it slide off. It isn’t easy, as the song says. But, hard or not, the negative has to be forgotten; its only value being a lesson learned.
Negativism, discouragement, condemnation, remorse, all are like junk from the attic. They aren’t worth keeping. They should be thrown into the trash can because that’s where they belong.
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