Making Peace With Your Past

I don't know if they still produce the segment, as I have stopped watching the CBS news in favor of ABC.  But one of the segments I most enjoyed was, "Everybody Has a Story."  The host of the segment would throw a dart at a map of the U.S., travel to the town struck by the dart, randomly choose a name out of the phone book, meet that person to learn their story, and then tell it during the broadcast.

I have a story.  So do you. My story is about 40 years long.  Yours may only be ten.  Or it may be 80.  As long as we're both breathing, both stories continue to unfold.  And like any well-written novel, the future chapters will unfold out of and be built upon the ones that have already been written.   That's all well and good when the chapters already written are good, and pleasant, and tell a happy story destined for a happy ending.  But for most of us, that story isn't reality.  All of us have at least one chapter that is devastating, painful, and one that we wish had never been written.  Most of us probably have more than just one. Just as the future chapters unfold out of the good and pleasant ones, they also will unfold out of the painful ones.  And the content of those future chapters will depend a great deal upon what you do with the unpleasant ones.

Some of us will allow the unpleasant chapters to tower above and cast their shadow over the the pleasant ones.  And we'll allow that subplot to become the main plot of our life story with every future chapter being sprinkled with the residue of pain, anger, and bitterness.  But then there are some who will take the time and do the work to make peace with their past, and end up with a much better ending.

To make peace with your past requires that you first group the painful events of yesterday into two categories.  There are those events which you are responsible for bringing about through bad choices born out of a lack of wisdom, judgment, and/or character.  And there are those events which befell you through no action of your own.  These events happened to you either through the bad choices of others, or the simple reality of a world that is broken on every possible level.

You can probably point with ease to the pain brought about by your own bad choices.  When you finish reading this, take some time to reflect on those bad choices and the consequences they birthed into your life.  Write them down on a piece of paper.  Then, take a second sheet of paper and write a letter of apology to yourself.  Pour your heart into it just as you would if you were writing to another person whom you had terribly injured.  The rest is up to you.  You can choose to forgive.  Or you can hold on to your self-anger.  If you choose to forgive, take the list of offenses and burn it.  And then put the apology letter away someplace.  Any time that you begin to feel self-hatred re-emerging out of the memories of the past, retrieve the letter, read it, and remember that you had chosen to forgive.

What about the pain brought about through the actions of others or the random assaults from a broken world?  I want to encourage you to view them as the necessary, scattered threads of a beautiful tapestry.  They were horrible and devastating.  But they are not the sum total of your life.  They are just a few of the many threads that make up your life.  And those few threads have the power to teach you, to strengthen you, and to build into your soul both the wisdom and the character to not only deal with your own pain in a healthy way, but to help others through their pain as well.  To return to our novel analogy, the few lines of pain throughout the chapters of your life - as devastating as they may be - can give way to a beautiful ending of redemption for yourself and for the other characters in your story.