Do you ever stop and marvel at how much you’ve changed over the course of a previous year? Have you ever looked back on yourself and asked, “Was that person really me?” Have you ever been a certain version of yourself for so long that you wonder how it’s possible that you could be so different now? In case you haven’t guessed, I tend to reflect on journeys. I like to reminisce over where I was exactly one year before and wonder where I will be exactly one year from that day.
Recently, I read an excerpt of my journal from the same time last year, astonished to realize that the difficult issues I was dealing with at that time, things that had a core influence on me throughout my whole life, seem like distant memories to me now. They were not even that long ago, but I feel like a completely different person. I experienced the somewhat curious sensation of suddenly awaking one day to realize that, somehow and sometime, it all just…ended. And a new life began.
Well, it didn’t happen quite so simply, and yet, looking back now, the transition was so seamless. Rather unremarkable and unnoticeable. I cannot pinpoint the exact day, the moment, in which I became free of the major issues that plagued my existence. Needless to say, I was driven to ask, “How could my ‘self-defining issues’ not even be a part of my life anymore? When did I finally begin to smile at life again?”
Last year, the residual reverberations of pain were still a part of my life. They still made a home in my heart and they still held my emotions captive. Battles had waged war in countless parts of me for so many years that the call for ceasefire had not brought the anticipated peace to my life. Yes, those battles, in the most defining of wars, had ended…but all is not well in the immediate moments of subsequent silence.
There follows an eerie echo of the shots fired. The cries made. The pain. I imagine standing in the middle of a quiet Civil War battlefield strewn with bodies as an overcast dawn breaks, breathing in the frosty air thick with the presence of death. One cannot smile at life again until the dead have been buried and mourned. Mourning cannot go on forever, but life cannot truly go on until mourning is complete.
One year ago, my war had been over for some time, but my mourning was incomplete.
Over the years, God had definitely worked some knots out of the muscles of my heart and smoothed some edges of my sharpened attitude, cleaning me up in different areas as I went along. I had definitely healed in many ways. But, this time last year, I was entering into yet another grieving and healing process over certain components of my life which had not yet been resolved. I knew it was a good process to go through in order to heal and move on, so I was prepared to deal with the issues.
However, this time around was different. I can see now how this experience was not merely another step in the healing process but rather the final step. Like cleaning a rough surface and having the most difficulty with the last layer of grime as it hides deep down in the crevices, the unreachable places that are so small you never imagined they even existed. This purification process was no longer merely a surface level sweep. The time had come for the deep cleansing to make the details of God’s work in me shine.
I can come up with more analogies but, frankly, I am most reminded of Lord of the Rings when Frodo and Sam finally reach Mordor and must crawl their way up the mountain. So close to their destination but the rigorous journey has made the last steps the most difficult.
Anyway, this particular grieving and healing process was, by far, the most confrontational, the most difficult, and the longest. This one took about six months for me to work through, and yet, in the end, this one was the most freeing. It had the greatest resolve, the most encompassing peace, and the most final of ends.
It’s hard to believe that all of the things that engulfed my life, all of the major things that made me angry, bitter, and depressed on a constant basis, have been dealt with and reconciled, once and for all. To think that this last year was the year. The year that I finally let go. Finally accepted the past. Finally forgave and moved on.
My negative experiences definitely influenced who I am today and the insecurities that resulted were so ingrained in me, taking up so much purpose in my life, that I could not fathom living without them. Ever. And now, it feels…normal to live life without those burdens. Like they never happened. Even though they did. Who would have thought that my hurts, struggles, and insecurities didn’t have to run my life?
They are just…gone. I said goodbye.
That is not to say that certain memories do not still hurt sometimes. They do, of course, but they certainly don’t own me anymore. They don’t rule my life. They made me who I was once, but holding onto those things would have kept me in a bad place, the place of war. I was still holding onto my way of life in war. That is understandable - wars are life-engulfing and earth-shattering experiences that change you forever - but enough time has gone by and enough healing has taken place so that my war no longer determines who I am or where I am going. My negative experiences no longer poison my outlook on life and separate me from Jesus, the most important person in my life.
I don’t know exactly when it happened - I had honestly reached the point where I had lost all hope of it ever happening - but I can honestly say that I can and I do smile at life again.
