Forgetting What Is Behind - PART 3

The reason I could no longer recognize myself was that I had changed. My experiences had transformed me, but I was still trying to be the man I once was. I clung to that persona because it served me so well in the past, and I believed it would come through for me again. But the more I persisted in using that image from the past as the pattern for my life moving forward, the more I felt unfulfilled. Adversity and affliction changed that. They forced me into a sifting process that made me reprioritize my values and rethink the decisions I was making regarding my future. That reassessment and readjustment allowed me to start appreciating how God had remolded my life over the last seven years.

Appreciating the change was only the first step. I had to let go of the man I was and start living like the man I had become. But, letting go of what worked in the past and embracing an unknown model for moving forward was easier said than done. It may sound brave and adventurous from the audience’s perspective, but I did not accept it right away as the one having to live it out. It took a process that started with pain, but fortunately, ended in clarity. Here are four steps that helped me through that process.

1. I had to accept my struggle as a warning. The fact that all my previously acquired life hacks were not working told me I needed to change how I lived. When all you know is not enough to get you past your problems, it is time to admit you do not know enough. I could have blamed others for the stresses they added to my life, but at some point, I had to accept responsibility for my well-being and find the solutions I needed.

2. I had to expose my issues to the light of knowledge and wisdom. I love this quote from James Baldwin: “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.” If I was having problems I could not solve, keeping them to myself fixed nothing. I had to stop living in my head, contemplating every worst-case scenario until I defeated myself. I shared my struggles with trusted family, friends, and mentors who had proven their love and commitment to my success in the past, and then solicited their counsel, advice, and prayers.

3. I had to pray and meditate on my struggles. The Bible tells us that victory is won through many advisors (Proverbs 11:14), but that is not all there is to our stories. When seeking the will of God for our lives, the voices of the wise are necessary, but they are not the most important. Their input provides a starting point from which we can begin our search, and their ongoing counsel keeps us focused and accountable. However, if you are trying to find God’s will, you must prioritize talking to Him and reading what His Word says about it. It has been my experience that the more I pray over an issue and correlate it to the truth of the Scriptures, the better I understand it from God’s perspective. For me, praying over my struggles gave me time to meditate on them as well. Talking to God about why I felt the way I did allowed me to work through my emotions as I was verbalizing them. And reading examples and exhortations in the Scriptures related to what I was facing increased my confidence that my search was important to God. It was this combination that motivated me to stay the course.

4. I had to live it once I knew it. Committing to a new way I had not walked before was unsettling. Change was not something I relished as I was already used to my lanes and moving at a manageable pace. It was the uncertainty of change that made me wary of embracing it at first chance. The disruptions to my routines, the effort to learn new things, and dealing with the mistakes one makes when doing things differently were all parts of change that frustrated me. But I could not turn back, not after learning how God had so masterfully guided my transformation. How could I stay my old self and be miserable and unfulfilled? I chose to acknowledge and embrace that God was at work in my life and wanted something better for me.

I close this series with a quote from Anais Nin that beautifully encapsulates the grit and the glory of our journeys to spiritual enlightenment and growth: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Stop looking at what is behind you and embrace the change God will use to transform you.

CONCLUSION.