Letting go is something I don’t do well. Letting go of the old hurts, regrets of
things I didn’t do and things I did do that weren’t in alignment with who I am. Letting go doesn’t always mean forgetting but
it does mean forgiving.
Forgiving ourselves when we do things that are not in
alignment with our own values is critical.
Maybe we lost our temper when we shouldn’t have. We judged people and
condemned them with others, not accepting them as valued children of God. We may have been dishonest with someone we
love or we gave in to temptation. I
don’t know of anyone who hasn’t done something they regret.
Christ says “No man having put his hand to the plough, and
looking back, is fit for the Kingdom of God.”
My daughter took riding lessons when she was young so I spent many hours
in the arena with her during her lessons.
One of the first lessons she learned was that the horse goes wherever
you are looking. Really? How does that thousand pound horse know where
you are looking with your eyes? I couldn’t
believe it! But, the more I watched the
lessons I learned that it was true, especially when she started jumping. If she was looking down at the jump, the
horse would stop short or go around the jump.
If she was looking up to where she wanted to go after the jump he would
sail over the pole or fence. Hmmm.
I began to think about this idea in other context. When I thought about (or looked at) things that
were not desirable in my life, I got more undesirables. If I focused on things that I was thankful
for in my life, that is what began showing up.
This is one of the most powerful lessons I have learned. What you focus on shows up more.
Just like my daughter on the horse, we lead our lives
consciously and unconsciously. It wasn’t
just where she was looking. When she
consciously looked and concentrated on where she wanted to go the rest of her
body unconsciously followed suit. Her
torso leaned, her legs gripped, her arms and hands led the reins anticipating
the next move. The horse sensed all
these things and did what he was supposed to do.
When we live intentionally, consciously anticipating what
God has intended for us, everything else will unconsciously follow.
In 2010 I was diagnosed with breast cancer and at the
beginning of chemotherapy I had another experience with this idea. In chemotherapy you are giving an I.V.
cocktail that essentially kills all the fast growing cells in your body. Many times you loose your hair, your fingernail
and toenails and it can be very debilitating.
The day after my first treatment I was focusing on the bags of “poison”
that had been put into my body and I could feel it working in my body killing
off all the quickly reproducing cells, especially the lining of my stomach so I
was feeling particularly yucky and sorry for myself. I decided to float in the pool to see if that
would make me feel better and as I was floating, feeling sorry for myself, God
hit me with a two by four. Ok, not
literally but I have a tendency to ignore the more subtle ways He communicates
with me so he has to take more drastic measures. It hit me that the only way I was going to
make it through treatment successfully was to allow the treatment to work on
the cancer but focus on the healing that was happening after. That was a turning point in my
treatment. I’m not saying that treatment
was easy but I was able to continue working and live by myself throughout
because of that change in mindset.
So, if we think about the ways we have been hurt in the
past, or hurt others, we will see more hurt happening. If we are grateful for all the good things and
opportunities that have come into our lives we will see more good in every
day. If we focus on the mistakes we have
made, we will continue to make more mistakes.
However, if we take the lessons from those mistakes and ask for
forgiveness when necessary, we will begin to live life in alignment with God
and ourselves.
My daughter took many tumbles off that huge horse and there
are many bruises and X-rays to prove it but I’m proud to say she still loves
horses and will take every chance she gets to ride. We can learn from her that we may not forget
all the falls, however, the thrill of the ride is worth the healing we receive
through forgiveness.
My prayer is that we will all be living forward with anticipation, giving thanks for all the good in our lives.
