Good morning from Colorado!
“For we walk by faith, not by sight.” — 2 Corinthians 5:7
Sometimes, when we look at our lives, we can see a clear difference between who we were then and who we are now.
I have one of those stories.
When I was eleven years old, something happened to me that no child should ever have to experience. When it happened again the following year, I finally told someone. What happened afterward was almost as painful as what had happened in the first place. Instead of being protected, I was blamed. Instead of being believed and supported, I became the problem.
Eventually, I was pushed out of the family and had to figure out life on my own.
It wasn’t easy.
But I did it.
For twenty years, I lived my life away from that environment. Then I returned because my mother needed me. And when I came back, I quickly realized that leaving a toxic environment doesn’t always mean the toxicity has left with you. Some of the same attitudes, conversations, and perceptions were still there.
People were still talking about me as though they knew my story.
But they didn’t know the woman I had become.
And that’s where my then-and-now comes in.
Then, I was afraid.
Now, I understand that fear doesn’t have to be the end of the story.
My fear eventually became faith because faith was what I had to produce if I was going to continue the journey.
I couldn’t change what happened to me.
I couldn’t change how people responded to it.
I couldn’t change what people said about me.
But I could change what I was looking at.
And when I began focusing more on Christ than on what had happened to me, something began to change inside of me.
I wasn’t suddenly fearless.
I was learning where to take my fear.
There is a difference.
An aunt-in-law once laughed about what happened and said something that has stayed with me: they thought I wasn’t smart, but I showed them differently.
She was right about one thing.
I did show them differently.
But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that I wasn’t put on this earth to spend my life proving people wrong. I don’t need to spend the rest of my life looking backward at people who misunderstood me.
I’d rather look forward.
I’d rather look at Christ.
Because when I look at Him, I can see something that I couldn’t see when I was eleven or twelve years old.
I can see that my life was not finished simply because someone tried to convince me that it was.
I can see that being rejected didn’t mean I was rejected by God.
I can see that surviving something doesn’t mean I have to remain defined by it.
And I can see that sometimes the greatest evidence of growth isn’t that the past disappears.
It’s that the past no longer controls where you are going.
That’s what faith has done for me.
My then was filled with fear.
My now is filled with faith.
And I’m still learning.
Maybe that’s what happens when we finally learn to focus on Christ.
We stop asking, “What did they do to me?”
And we begin asking, “What is God going to do with me now?”
That’s a question worth carrying into the weekend.
The Takeaway for Us
- Your past can explain some things about you, but it does not have to define you.
- Fear may be part of your story, but faith can determine how the story continues.
- Sometimes the biggest change isn’t what happened around you. It’s what happens when you change what you’re looking at.
A Weekend Prayer
Lord, help us look beyond what happened yesterday and see what You are doing today. Help us place our fear, our disappointment, our questions, and our past hurts in Your hands. Teach us to focus on You when everything around us tries to pull our attention away. Remind us that our past may be part of our story, but it does not have to be the author of our future. Amen.
I’ll see you Monday for another 15 Minutes with God.
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