Remembering While Letting Go

Maybe the title of this writing reminds you of a country song but this writing is not nearly as sad if you take heed as one thing that I have learned over the course of my last especially the last few years is that we must learn from our past while letting these things go. Perhaps this sounds like a contradiction in terms but just because we let something go does not mean that we cannot learn from it. In fact, we can only learn from things when we let them go.

Deuteronomy 32:7-8 reads “Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee. When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.” What we read here is remembering out past and the things that have happened to us does much good including making us strong.

There are many different examples from my life that I could use here but I’ll use one lesson– which is actually a few different events but the lessons are the same—to help bring this writing to life. The different events in question involve my previous serious relationships, three, before I met my fiancé and while I say three, it’s more like two as one female was only waiting for her high school boyfriend to decide he actually wanted to be with her but I did learn something from this incident that has both helped and hindered me with my fiancé.

One of the biggest mistakes that I have learned from my own personal conduct and from my experiences with others is holding on to a situation and/or event and allowing it to hold you back or hinder you from doing more. The last few relationships taught me more bad than they did good but the lesson was the same: let it go but learn from it. An important note to make is when we say remember, it refers to letting go of the situation but learning from the all the different lessons instead of holding on to bitterness and allowing it to hinder us and/or hold us back: “Now all these things happened unto them for examples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come” (1 Corinthians 6:11).

Personally, I cannot say that I am glad that I went through different moments and incidents but I am glad to have the knowledge and experience that I now possess. Did some of these things hurt? Absolutely. However, what does feel good is having this knowledge that came from the experience and while different situations may come up again, I will have the ability to handle it differently. This is what is meant by history repeats itself as there is nothing that this old world hasn’t seen before but with that said, learning from the past can help us in shaping the future: “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us” (Ecclesiastes 1:9-10).