Defeating the Past

I watched the movie Scott Pilgrim vs. The World last night. At first, I thought it was just one of those strange and awkward films, but the more I watched it, the more I saw how relevant it is to my life and life in general.

Without giving too much away, Scott Pilgrim wants to date a girl named Ramona Flowers. In order to do so, he has to defeat her seven "evil exes." What stood out to me as I watched the movie was how the past intruded the present. The past haunted both Scott and Ramona. It was something to defeat. Something to overcome. Their past was always "just around the corner," waiting for another fight. You never knew what was to come in the next scene.

In the same way, I am trying to defeat my past. The past haunts me through flashbacks and nightmares. Each and every day I relive traumatic experiences from my past. My past is something to overcome.

I had therapy this morning and to say it was difficult is kind of an understatement. I am exhausted from therapy, especially today. I talk about the extreme abuse, the details that nobody wants to hear, the details that I have held in for so long, the details that invade my mind at various points during the day. It kind of feels like opening Pandora's box. 

But in order to move on from the past, I have to go through it and deal with it. In going through it, we can overcome it in a way that it no longer has the power it does. That's exactly what Scott Pilgrim did. He courageously fought the past and even himself.

At one point in the movie, someone says to Scott "If you want something bad, you have to fight for it." He was referencing Ramona but I believe it applies to anything that we truly want in this life.

What I strive for each day is to feel freedom in Christ. I do not want my past to intrude into my present anymore. I want to be free from my past. And that is what I'm fighting hard for. I'm fighting to get rid of the shame. I'm fighting to get rid of the paranoia. I'm fighting to take back control. That's why I continue to go to therapy and talk through some of the most difficult things one can endure. This life is not easy sometimes, but if we want to move forward, we have to fight through the darkness and chaos.

At another point in the movie, Scott says to Ramona that he doesn't care about her past- that he still loves her even after dealing with her past exes. I believe that's how God looks at us. He doesn't see our pasts. He sees the present and the future. He wipes away every mistake, every regret and helps us to move forward.

This movie helped me to understand what it means to face our past headon. It's scary. It can be difficult. It can take all of our energy and can feel like it takes all of us to defeat it. But we can do it if we set our eyes on God and move through those deep, dark places.