Letting Go of the Past

One minute, I’m in the present. The next, I’m back there… Everything I feel, everything I see, everything I hear, everything I smell… all of my senses are in the past. In the place I never wanted to back to again. The page I never wanted to read again.

The triggers come out of nowhere. Most of the time, I’m completely blindsided. I have no idea what others are going to say or do, what situations are going to come into my life, what the next minute will bring. It’s kind of strange to think that my past controls how I fear the future.

Countless people have told me over the years to get over it, just control the memories. They have no idea what I have been through. It is not just from one situation in my life. It is so much more than that. Trust me, if I could wave a magic wand and say “goodbye, past,” I wholeheartedly would in a second. But that’s not realistic. The reality is that sometimes we have to go through the darkest and deepest moments in our lives in order to keep moving forward.

When I woke up this morning, my anxiety was at a very low level. My anxiety increased dramatically throughout the day and my heart was back to pounding, my thoughts were back to those moments I would rather forget.

My anxiety became so high that I went to my church and played the piano for an hour or so, just letting my frustrations, anger and fears flow through my hands into the piano. After playing, I just stopped out of nowhere and literally wept. Sometimes everything you’ve been running from catches up with you. I have tried for years to grieve over my past and everything I’ve endured but I do not truly know how.

It felt so good to let my feelings out… Crying seems to do that.

I carry inside memories of events and situations that I have been told that nobody should ever have to endure. There are still many things I have been through that I have not shared with anyone. I try my best to hide those memories and my past from those around me, in hopes that if I do it well, maybe I’ll forget them or maybe the pain will just suddenly go away.

Right now, I can honestly say that God is carrying me through this. I feel Him and hear His voice even in the times when my past haunts me. I know that it is only through Him that I can truly move forward and be freed and healed completely from my past.

Even though I have been through enormously difficult times, God has blessed me with His grace, mercy, love, hope, peace and never-ending strength.

Yes, I have had many tough and challenging times in my life, but I would be nowhere, nothing and nobody if I did not have God in my life. He is everything I have ever needed and He is always there when I need Him.