PAST HURTS

You probably have heard this before:  That thing they say... that we should not let our past limit what we can be at present and what we could become in the future... or something like that.  And you probably have heard that song by Kelly Clarkson called "Because of you."  One line says, "Because of you I never stray too far from the sidewalk..."  and it goes on to say how her past has influenced her attitude towards her present life. I have read some comments from listeners of the song that the singer was actually kind of singing this song to her father.  I do not know if this is true but  I'll take a wild guess that this song is becoming an apt description of the reality of more and more children esp. teenagers and young adults of today.  I am personally acquainted with one or two.

All of us have a past but only a handful (or did I get the statistics upside down?) has an all-good-all-happy past. Most of us have ghosts from the past that still haunt us in our present.  They are of course varied just as human faces are different but most of us who are being haunted have a past of abuse and neglect. It doesn't have to be by our families but certainly by our significant others. 

I just had an encounter with a girl whom I used to think of as just another spoiled bratty teenager.  She is sweet in her own way but a brat in all the senses of the word. How wrong was I! I found out that she has been a victim of abuse and has been hanging on a little thread of her sanity for five years now.  Yes, now when it is almost too late to do anything to help her.  Thank God, there's still time.

Past hurts can either make us or break us or both.  For the other person that I know, her past has both broken and made her.  Lucky her!  She was able to look past the darkness and focus on the light at the end of the tunnel. The key was forgiveness of the past and of oneself.  With forgiveness comes acceptance that the past is a part of one's life just as a book starts in chapter 1. But not all people are able to forgive their past or themselves.  I don't know but it is easier to forgive others than to forgive oneself.  Probably because it is easier to forgive someone who says "I'm Sorry."  Of course we cannot really tell ourselves "I'm sorry, self" that is probably why we find it hard to forgive ourselves... or maybe we should learn to say sorry to ourselves if that would lead to healing.  When we dwell on our past hurts without forgiveness, the past becomes a ghost that we play hide-and-seek with.  A ghost that has the power to dictate what we can or cannot do and therefore what we could or could not become.

It doesn't have to be this way.  Yes, easier said than done  but it has to be done if all people with a past are to give themselves a chance to look at life head-on and with hopeful eyes.  We did not choose to be treated unfairly so early in our lives.  We were not born in this world so that someone can feed his/her ego and selfish desires by hurting us.  We were born to have a life.  And that Life is supposed to be lived in its fullest! We were born to be alive (like the song again:) and not just to exist.  We are here to live and leave our mark.

So...

To you all who has been in one way or another treated unjustly, whether because of your own doing or undoing, do not let the evil of this world leave its mark on you.  Live a beautiful life and leave a mark of beauty and greatness that the world will never forget.

.................

Only Jesus can heal all wounds...