Photo by kevin turcios on Unsplash
As a young adult, my father frequently shared a memory of me from when I was a little girl. He would narrate the moment that I took the keys from his hand and tried to open the door of the house myself. Barely tall enough to reach the lock he would mimic my words in youthful language: “I do it!” I can’t count the times that he has repeated this story to me, and many days he would look into my eyes and see that little girl. He saw the courageous fire that was just starting to kindle when I first grabbed those keys. I used to wiggle away in embarrassment because in my late teens and twenties I felt I was too old for my father to hold my cheeks and talk to me like I was a baby. He saw me; not necessarily as a little girl, but he saw me through a historical love that began at the point of conception.
My father and I have had an eventful relationship over the years. I spent much of the adult portion of my life so far reflecting on negative memories. I gave so much energy to the things he did wrong, I did wrong, others did wrong, etc. I fed the flames of negativity causing the little girl inside me to work exponentially harder just to keep her courageous fire from burning out.
I have now come to realize that there are options in what I am reflecting on. There is a power that I give my memories. I can choose to oxygenate the burning embers of negativity until I combust, or I can breathe into the flames of the courageous little girl who knew she could do anything. Our memories are given a degree of power. Many times, we discuss negative events more often than positive ones. Each time we repeat a story that has damaged us or caused us pain we give it fresh energy. The fire of pain and suffering is given more “wood” and it consumes us with an unquenchable hunger.
Hear me clearly. I am a BIG proponent of talking through hard things and processing them properly. However, I want to talk to those of you who have been keeping pain alive. We talk so much about what pain does to us, but we fail to realize that we give it access. I recently found myself wondering where my power went. Weighed down by discouragement; I was trying to find the courageous little girl that said: “I do it!” Even though I didn’t get the door open on my own at that time; there was something inside me growing. There was a confidence and a power that only God knew I was going to need. So, I asked myself: Where did that power go? Did I lose it? How do I get it back?
Here’s what I came to realize:
The power never left. It was directed to the painful memories and that I didn’t yet possess as a little girl. This same power that once gave me courage produced negative experiences in my adult life because of what I was choosing to think about. The more I dwelled on the bad things, the more I expected the worst, and therefore became a product of false limitations. Power is not negative or positive, good or bad, right or wrong. Power is neutral, impartial, and independent. It illuminates whatever it connects to. Your ability to choose gives you control over your power and how you distribute it.
I rarely gave power to any of the good things that have happened in my life. While all experiences have their space in the time of history, I choose which ones to give fresh energy to. This choice created a prison of my past in my present and drew blueprints for stronger restrictions in my future.
We have all been through things that we must talk through and learn from, but check with yourself: Are you giving these memories a present energy that is allowing them to have just as much impact several years later as when it happened? Are you rehearsing the events of that time over and over again keeping you from feeling anything other than what you felt in those moments? I certainly was, and in turn, everything I saw in my present and my future was a reflection of my past. All of my expectations of days to come were pure replicas of what had happened to me.
Now that’s what you call a cycle.
Let’s stop doing this to ourselves and to the people we love. When we energize past pain, it is hard to produce forgiveness and freedom. I am not saying that you will forget or pretend it didn’t happen, but here’s the question I pose to myself and you:
Why are you more concerned about forgetting the pain, and not as equally concerned about forgetting the love?
“Finally, believers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable and worthy of respect, whatever is right and confirmed by God’s word, whatever is pure and wholesome, whatever is lovely and brings peace, whatever is admirable and of good repute; if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think continually on these things [center your mind on them, and implant them in your heart]."
- Philippians 4:8 (AMP) -
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