I've been doing some "clutter clean-out"! Going through closets, drawers, and most difficult of all... boxes full of memories, you know... those filled with old letters, trinkets, cards, pictures, wedding and graduation announcements, mine & Steve's childhood memory items, our kids childhood memory items, and obituaries of friends and loved ones, etc. Things that one moment can bring a smile of remembrance and then the next bring sobs of loss.
It seems as if life keeps bringing me back to things that I thought I had dealt with in the past and yet there they are one more time, over & over, again & again. I "put off" doing these kind of "clean-outs" because of the emotion that often accompanies the chore. I have turned the art of "procrastination" into a "spiritual gift"! However, I am still surprised when these feelings rear up like the Loch-ness monster from the depths of a lake and stare me in the face.
Each time I am confronted with these ghosts of the past, I see that even though I am staring at the same monster, my response is different now than it was a year or years ago. Tucked into my pocket is the gift of understanding and a continual process of "letting go". Understanding that when things happen in life that wound me to the core, learning to trust God, letting go, and giving them over to Him, they don't wield the power they once had.
So in all of my exploring over the last couple of weeks, and arriving back in my memory to places I have been, it has been as if it were a first visit. Because of God's continued healing and strength the wounds no longer hold the magnitude of pain they once possessed.
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