When Emmy was small and going through a rough stage—I can’t recall which one, but I’d venture to guess it involved lack of sleep for us—I made the comment, “Someday, we’ll look back at this and muse, ‘Those were the good old days.’” And Jeff gently contradicted me, “These are the good old days.”
As you can see, it’s tempting to romanticize the past, which can inhibit me from seeing the blessings of the present. I can look at today’s difficulties and long for those years when I had a great marriage, a healthy husband, regular date nights, and predictable breaks from the daily “mommy” grind. I may reminisce about travels to Sonoma, Puerto Rico, Normandy, and other exciting trips whose memories are firmly etched in my mind and heart. It is heartbreaking that all of those blessings now exist only in photos and memories.
While there is nothing inherently wrong with engaging in this nostalgia, if my feet are firmly rooted in the past, it is impossible to fully engage with the present or to even contemplate the future. As a result, I may miss the blessing of spending time with my two daughters together and individually, thus wasting our precious moments. Or I might take for granted those sweet trips the girls and I have taken with their Nana and cousin Gracelyn.
Likewise, it is easy to romanticize the past three years of spending time with my girls, focusing on home education, deepening relationships with other homeschooling moms, and feeling the love and edification of people who have walked with us through the valley of the shadow of death and celebrated the truth in the midst of mourning.
My past is a cornucopia of blessings, and I thank God for each. However, if I’m not careful, the past may be more than a stumbling block; it could become something to which I hold fast and refuse to let go: an idol. What a sobering thought!
The past is merely a country I’ve toured, not a place I choose to live. Three years ago, I firmly believed God would bring something amazing out of our pain. I held fast to these words:
“He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted…to comfort all who mourn, to console those who mourn in Zion, to give them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, a garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified” (Isaiah 61:1d, 2d-3 NKJV).
While it is God’s work to create beauty out of the ashes, I am responsible for seeing that beauty when it’s directly in front of my face. Moreover, I am responsible for turning away from the past, fully embracing the present and believing God for provision in the future. All of this beauty, joy, and praise works for our good, changes us into “trees of righteousness,” but even our righteousness is for His glory, not our own.
God has a perfect plan that I cannot know the fullness of at present. There is a twinge of fear as I step out in faith on an adventure whose trials I can’t anticipate and whose heights I can’t yet perceive. It would seem safer to remain in my comfortable niche, but God never calls us to “safe living.” He calls us to reckless love. He beckons us to walk away from comfort in order to follow Him (Luke 9:23-24, Matt 19:21-22).
What does that look like for us at this time? The girls and I have met an amazing family in a similar situation to our own. Their past holds many happy memories, and they too, have walked a path with Jesus through the valley of the shadow of death. Though we met these four young men and their dad recently, we have been praying for them for awhile, empathizing with their loss and asking the Lord to comfort their hearts. We are overjoyed to be in their lives, and ALL five of them are blessings from the Lord! While we can’t know the intricacies of God’s plan, we trust He is good. Our past, present and future are all in His hands.
These are the good old days. They are the days the Lord has made, so we will rejoice and be glad (Psalm 118:24).