Letting Go of the Past

"Should old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?" I always thought that song was about letting go of the past, forgiving and getting over our grudges. Sometimes that's easy, and sometimes its not. 

A few years ago, I was casually walking down the aisle of a hardware store when a former classmate of mine from elementary and middle school (who I will refer to as Zoey) popped up in front of me out of nowhere. She nervously started apologizing for things that happened in the past...way back in the past. She started apologizing for picking on me when we were kids, for calling me names. "I gave you flats" she said. "You did?" I thought. I hadn't remembered that. She said she realizes now that she picked on me because she wasn't feeling good about herself. My first response was to simply put my arms around her. I then said, "When we are young we do stupid things, but then we grow up." Forgiving others is easy. Forgiving myself is not. 

It was 9 PM on the night of 8/30/23. I had just finished with my last counseling session. I immediately turned my attention to my digital calendar and my work e-mails. I was scheduled to have surgery the next morning and I was trying to get all unresolved business taken care of before beginning an absence from my counseling practice for a few days. I was scheduling appointments and sending e-mails. I don't know what else I was doing, I just know that it was suddenly after 10 when I was still sitting at my computer and my niece, Jeanie, appeared in the doorway. "Jos went to bed", she said. "So soon? Oh no, I didn't have a chance to say good night." I replied.

We had been keeping our eyes on my brother, Jos, that day because he had a bad night the night before. Jos had been on hospice for about six months. He frequently had heart pain that was controlled with nitroglycerin, but the night before the nitro was not working, and Jos had to be taken to the hospital to get stronger medication. Our fears peaked the night before but they subsided a bit that day because he seemed to be doing better. "I told him you would probably be over later." Jeanie said. "Well I don't want to go over now if he already went to bed." I said. "I'll be sure to stop over tomorrow before we leave for the hospital". However, tomorrow was too late because Jos passed away that night. I had missed my last opportunity to talk to my brother while he was still alive. How could I have let that happen?.....again. 

Less than two years before, Mom had reached the point at which she became bedridden and was completely dependent on Jeanie and I. I had been having trouble moving Mom to change her, so the nurse but a blanket under her to help with that, only it seemed that the blanket was only making things harder. In exasperation, I began to yell, "Oh that damn blanket! What a stupid nurse!" Then I turned to our cat and yelled, "Get down, Inky! You're in the way!" The poor cat wasn't doing anything wrong. He was just trying to be close to Mom. How could I have interfered with that? Upset because I was upset, Mom began to cry. She had just been smiling a few minutes before. I didn't know that that was the last night that Mom would be conscious. 

Welcome to the top of my "If Only" rumination list. "If only I had done A instead of B." I would give anything to be able to roll back the clock to 9 PM on 8/30/23 so I could turn the damn computer off and put the damn e-mails aside to go over and see my brother. If only I had taken a deep breath and said, "I can figure this out" instead of ranting about the nurse and the blanket.  There's lots of other "If Only"s on the list. Those just happen to be the most dramatic examples. When we are young we do stupid things. Then we grow up.......and continue to do stupid things. 

There is a type of OCD called "Hit and Run" OCD. We pass someone walking next to the road and compulsively have to look back to make sure we didn't run over them by accident, without knowing it. The rear view mirror is there for a purpose, but you have to remember that while your eyes are on it, you are taking them off the road ahead of you. If you spend too long checking for imagery accidents, you run the risk of getting into a real one. The same holds true for ruminating about the past. While re-living painful memories, I can become completely distracted and disconnect from everything going on around me in the present. "Earth calling Dorothy!" That's what my cousin, Danny, once yelled across the room at a party, when he saw that I was becoming lost in thought.   

I write this blog on New Year's Eve because I know that I am not the only one with an "If Only" Rumination list. I know there are others like me who wish that we could live our lives over and do a lot of things differently, but we can't and that can be tormenting. It can be tormenting until Jesus tells us that we don't have to. 

We can see things a little clearer sometimes, when we are looking at others. I recently had a client sitting in front of me with tears rolling down her face as she discussed her own "If Only" rumination list. She looked up and asked, "Am I a bad person?" I looked back at her and said, "If you were a bad person, you wouldn't care." 

Jesus doesn't care about what's in our past. He only cares about what's in our hearts now. He only asks for sincere repentance and a reasonable effort to not repeat the same mistakes again. That's why he said to the man on the cross next to him, "Today, you will be with me in paradise". Who are we to set a higher standard for ourselves than what Jesus sets for us? I take comfort from the parable about the workers in the vineyard, the one that sometimes troubles the "righteous" who think that its unfair that those who worked only one hour got paid the same wages as those who worked a full day (Matthew 20:1-16). I take comfort from that parable because I can relate much more strongly to the people who took a whole lifetime to get it right than the ones who did everything right in the first place. 

My pastor asked us to make our New Year's resolution this year be to LET the love of God drop down on us like the New Year's ball for 365 days this year. It sounds so easy....until you let your "If Only" list convince you that aren't worthy of it or shouldn't have it. Let God be the judge.

We are a little over an hour away from a new year, a chance to start over. Welcome to the vineyard of 2025, where there is certainly a lot of work to be done! We may have had a rocky past. We may be in the "later" part of life. We may only have an hour left to work. Let's stop looking back and focus on the road ahead of us. Earth calling Dorothy! It's almost time for "New Years Rockin Eve"! 

                                                                             Happy New Year!