Home 40 years ago.
There are ample opportunities to reflect in the work I’m
presently doing. One location my work
takes me to is my place of residence in 1975—a bygone era that is patchy by
memory. As I drove into this area
recently there was something incredibly emotional going on within me; a sort of
giddy excitement because of the mysteries represented in the anticipated
reuniting of me with my memories. Never
does this drive become banal. It’s
always filled with a mind in the eternality of the experienced past.
As I pulled up across the road, noting the house was for sale, I
wondered if it was vacant. It was. Excitement built within me, because, to the
onlooker, I had a reason to be there. I
peered through the lounge room window, and could see through the bare room into
the kitchen. The dimensions I could see
made me wonder of the experiences I had with my brothers and parents in those
spaces, a time that still seems vague amidst the clarity of certain things of
that time—like the precious little box I had that I kept special things in, on
my dresser. I remember the army uniform
I got for my eighth birthday. I think of
my youngest brother crawling around the house.
I sense my mother preparing the evening meal. I recall the fright in me starting school
mid-year in a foreign place, much colder and wetter than I was used to, having
to make new friends. And then, back in
the present moment, I realise afresh that over forty years have passed us.
An experience like this is a gift.
God has gifted the aged to portions of joy in the everyday of
times that have passed.
The older we get the more precious and eternally mysterious is
the past. We can no sooner travel back
there than we can fast-forward time, or be in the heavenly realm with Jesus,
until that is our time. Whatever we
cannot touch is eternally significant—a distance all too far that evokes within
our awareness something piquing wonder.
These experiences can only be enjoyed—or more accurately, are best enjoyed—when we’ve succumbed to the
healing of Jesus through sojourning with our truth, past and present. Both dimensions of time perspective are
crucial, for peace in the present is the indicator of the work we’ve done to
reconcile the past in order that our future can be restored to us.
The older we get the less we may worry about the future;
provisional on healing.
Healing tends toward us more power over fear, guilt, and shame. Then nothing can defeat us in the
moment. The abundant life.
This abundant life is paradoxical. The more we realise we depend on God daily
for healing, the less we struggle in this life.
The more we understand that our identities depend on failure, the less
failure worries us because we depend on God.
The weaker we seem, the stronger we actually are. The more we realise we’re failures without
Jesus, the realer He makes us, so fear, shame, and guilt no longer drive us.
Healed emotions beget healed emotions, and the best of this is
the embracing of all emotion with courage, energised by faith. The meeting of reality without contrivance.
That’s freedom. The
gospel promise of the abundant life.
It’s real.
***
Peace in the present indicates we’ve reconciled our past by
faith so our future/hope may be restored to us for love.
Wander the golden path of healed emotions. If that isn’t within your capacity right now,
promise yourself to your journey with Jesus; through surrender, the sweet
embracement of your vulnerability. Jesus
takes us there. It’s what we were born
for.
Wrestling with ugly emotions warrants healing that feels like
gladness and gratitude for what we had earlier endured.
Until next time, yours in The Lord,
Steve Wickham.
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