My dear Aunt Donna asked if I would read Ecclesiastes 11:8 and think about writing something about it and especially the part where it talks about remembering the days of darkness and what that might mean. Well this has been a journey for me. Over the past few years I have been spending a lot of time looking at my past and making peace with much of it. I thought this would be an easy assignment, but God had some more work to do in with me.
Ecclesiastes 11:8 says, “however many years a man may live, let him enjoy them all. But let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many. Everything to come is meaningless.”
I believe Solomon is reminding us in this chapter to remember that we should have fun when we are young, but that all of our actions carry with them a consequence. Eternity is at play! So, be careful what you do when you are young and not as wise. Remember the foolish things so you do not repeat them.
As I started looking more at the effects of our darkest days this is where God started tugging at me again. When we are looking at the past it can help us to see where we have come from. Have you ever visited a museum or visited historical sites throughout the world? Why do you visit those places? For me it is to remember, learn, and teach my family about our history. Families share all kinds of traditions or customs and they want to see them passed down through the generations. I remember saying as a young adult, “I will never do this or that as Mom or Dad did.” As we get older looking back, I can see why Mom and Dad did some of the things they did, I have a new appreciation because my perspective is different now. Looking at the past we can gain knowledge about the things that have worked and the things we want to avoid. If we do not reflect on the past, we are likely to repeat the events in the present whether we want to or not.
When it comes to a person’s life looking back at even the darkest moments brings healing. You might not think it does at the moment, but it allows a person to grieve those events. By taking the time to grieve the past we honor that time. We are saying I realize that this happened, and we can start to move forward. Now you might say you can shut those memories out or block that time out of your mind. Even if a person does not talk about the memories, they are still with them and impact their life one way or another. Let’s take a silly example for instants, I was a college student and went to eat at a local fast food restaurant. Later I got very sick and learned I had food poisoning. To this day I cannot bring myself to eat at that place. That one lousy experience still causes my body to remember how I felt when I ate their food that one night. I thought I had moved on and past that, but my body says something different. I know you think that is not the same, but it shows how our bodies hold on to things.
The same is true when we experience something devastating on a more personal level. Our bodies remember what we felt during that time. I can still remember what it felt like to sit in a doctor’s office being told I would never be able to have a child biologically. That pain comes up at random times out of the blue still to this day. I remember what it felt like to sit around a table and hear my parents tell me they were getting a divorce. Or what it felt like to want so desperately to be noticed and loved so much that I would starve myself in hopes that my parents would see I was not well. All these examples are things that no matter how hard I try to block them my body feels and knows and trust me I have tried to block them out big time. I can hear a story or song on the radio and it reminds me of a time in my past. Smell something and be right back in the doctor’s office, or be driving down the same road when I got the call about something I was worrying over and I flash back to that time as if it were happening right then. Are you starting to think about things in your life now? I feel as I am writing that someone understands what I am saying. We want to believe that we have moved on and past some of the things in our past, but have you really? It is ok to realize there are still things you need to work on, remember I said at the start I thought I was good, and found I still had some things to look at more in-depth. I think it is also important to point out our bodies do the same for memories of pure joy! The smells, sounds, or a touch of something will bring it back to our memory. Those are the memories that we hold onto in the difficult times. The smell of Grandma’s pound cake, Christmas trees, babies, salt air, I could go on and on of beautiful moments in time. I think it is imperative to have a balance and understanding of the good and bad memories. Knowing that in it all we have a Heavenly Father that wants us to live a life full of abundance and freedom from our pain.
The critical thing to remember is, our past is there, but it does not have to define us. We are not the same person as we were then. I see my growth through the years, I see areas that I want to avoid, areas that still need work, and areas that I can celebrate. I am a counseling student about to graduate and I see the past as helping to shape who we have become both good and bad. Because of negative experiences I respond to people according to how I have learned to interpret the world. The beauty in this is that I can also learn new ways of being, that can erase the old messages we play in our heads. God designed us to be able to grow and change so that we can live the most abundant life we can have. Sometime that means we need to take some time and think about our past, grieve it, and then start a new journey. We can face whatever comes our way with confidence, that we will rise because God has equipped us with all we need to see it through. As I look at all that I have come through, I can now show honor and worship to my creator for always walking with me and never leaving me alone. It is my story and I can choose how to write the next chapter. I am writing it with respect, gratitude, grace, and freedom because God has delivered us from our past! How are you going to use your story?
