's Daily Message - LIVING IN THE PAST

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's Daily Message

Friday

March 17, 2006

LIVING IN THE PAST

I used to live in the past. Even as a kid, I was stuck back there. Sometimes

my father would get upset with me and say some pretty horrible things, and

when he said them, it seemed his words were carved into my brain. After my

dad walked away, I would sit in my room by myself and think about what he

said. I would keep repeating his words of anger, and I felt worse and worse

about me.

When someone at school made fun of me or put me down, I would think about it

the rest of the day, and when I walked home after school, I would hear the

words that hurt me so. When I was in college, I had an art teacher that

didn`t like my style of painting. I would work weeks on a canvas, and when I

brought it into class, he would immediately attack it and verbally rip it to

shreds. When I went out in the working world, I encountered the same thing.

I had a boss at one of my first jobs who just had it out for me. I could do

nothing right! I would work hard on my projects, and he would never

appreciate anything I did. One day he called me stupid, and for a while

there, I believed him.

For a long time, I walked around in my past. I would continually think about

all the times I was hurt. I would go over incidents, and the more I thought

about them, the more sad and depressed I became.

Since I know some of you so well, I know you, too, spend time living in the

past, and that`s not a good place to be living. Even though we have many

great things that have happened to us, we seem to concentrate on the

negative or upsetting part of our past. And you know what happens when you

live in the past. You don`t enjoy the present, and you have no time to plan

for the future! You have to forgive those who hurt you in the past. You most

probably won`t totally forget what happened, but the less you think about

it, the more time you`ll have to embrace each day that God gives you!

Love,