Releasing the Past by Embracing the Future
How do we let go of a traumatic, disappointing, or abusive past?
How do we let go of a traumatic, disappointing, or abusive past? How can we forgive (including self), release, be healed, and move on?
Sadly, there is no magical wand. Christianity doesn’t offer magic, or the easy way out. Releasing the past doesn’t mean ignoring or running from it.
Releasing the past means journeying straight through the trauma and the memories in order to reach the other side. And that’s the hard part.
None of us are born trained in the ways of suffering. Most often we don’t know how to deal with it, which makes the struggle all the more exhausting. It’s like a marathon; you can’t complete the entire race the first time you try. You have to train for it.
Training for suffering sound fun—yet it’s necessary.
Releasing the past means running straight through it. That’s tiresome because most of us haven’t built up enough stamina for the entire journey. At some point we get stuck and when we do, it feels like we’ve fallen into the Molasses Swamp.
How do we get unstuck? How can we begin to move forward again?
Ruminating
First, take a look at exactly where you’re stuck. What is it all about, deep in the core of things?
I once found myself stuck in rumination over the betrayal of an intimate friend. I just couldn’t believe this person had turned into someone I no longer recognized—or, even worse, perhaps he’d never been the person I thought he’d been. All my perceptions were distorted—my perception not just of him, but of myself, my past, even the entire world around me.
In order to heal this deep wound, I knew I had to get down to the interior of things. Turning to God in prayer, kneeling in Adoration, I felt compelled to ask myself the tough question of where, exactly, I was stuck. Was I stuck trying to figure out why this person had betrayed me? Or was I actually trapped in self-recrimination, trying to understand how I had “allowed” the betrayal to happen by letting that person into my life in the first place?
Judas came up to Jesus at once and said, “Hail, Master!” And he kissed Him. Jesus said to him, “Friend, why are you here? Would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?”
(Matt. 26:49-50, Luke 22:48)
Even though I’d been focusing on the why of the betrayal, and how this person could have turned out to be someone I’d least expected, I eventually came to realize that the issue was less about what he’d done to me and more about myself—my own reactions, my own perceived culpability. Even though I rationally knew the betrayal wasn’t my fault, my interior heart—broken as it was—persistently placed the blame squarely on my own shoulders.
It was then that I realized what I needed in order to begin healing. I had to release my feelings of guilt and self-blame, my constant self-reproach and self-condemnation. That interior negative voice haggling and continuing to abuse me needed to be renounced, rejected, rebuffed. That voice was the voice of lies. I didn’t need to listen to lies any longer. I had to reject all thoughts of being unlovable, unworthy, naïve and stupid for “letting” abuse and betrayal happen to me.
I realized I needed to love myself as Christ loves me.
