"Self talk, Soul Talk," Chap. 8; Look back...

Yesterday as I sat down to read this weeks chapter, I had no idea what I was getting into.
If you want to see how others responded to this chapter, pop on over to Lelia’s site and check out the links from there!

Each week, Jennifer has sent me on different paths, all of them being very important as I have finished my counseling and have been adjusting to needing to catch myself in the things that normally my counselor would have talked over with me.

This week talked about something that I have realized before. Something that I think is what my blog has, in part, become about.

Jennifer talked about how it is so important to look back to memories in our life and see how God has worked through them and in them. And how He has redeemed them.

“Reviewing our milestones gives us a chance to mark progress and keep on the right path. It affords an opportunity to remember.”

“The real power of any moment is fully realized when it is remembered. The experience might have been painful or pleasant, but its intensity and meaning grow when we remember and reflect upon it, when we place it alongside those milestone moments we’ve stowed away in our thought closets.”

When I was in counseling, it was a lot of time reviewing painful memories. Some of them horrific as Jennifer mentioned. Those memories were just horrible. Some of them so bad that I had blocked the worst of them out.

But, as we worked through them, a little at a time, God started re-defining them, re-labeling them. He helped me work through them, processing the memories so that I could come to terms with them, and helping me get to the point where I could see how He was working through them.

The painful memories are still that. Painful. However, I do know that God will work them together for good.

“He can make even painful memories profitable as He gives meaning to them.”

It has also been good to look back at the good memories too. The wonderful, amazing things that God has done in my life, the times of celebration, the times of joy I have experienced. Those things have become more and more precious to me as I have looked back at them. In that, Jennifer is right. When we look back at our experiences, they have purpose and value and they are part of our stories.

Our souls do need to look back and not forget what has happened in the past… not only to not forget what has made us who we are, but to remember what God has done through those experiences. How He has proven so faithful.

One of the biggest things for me that I never want to forget is one of the most significant ways God showed me how He was healing me, in the midst of my counseling.

He took something that was in my mind’s eye, a big black box that I was afraid to open. God took it and made it into a white box that wasn’t too hard for me to open. I was sitting in Jesus’ lap, and He took bits of my heart out of that box, and slowly was healing them together. I was held securely in His lap as He picked each piece out and healed it back into my heart… and then He leaned over and blew the breath of His Spirit into my heart, turning from fragile and breakable, to a living heart of flesh.

There is so much more to the image, but you can read more about that HERE.

Ever since then, I have looked back fairly regularly to that post, and to my journaling from that time.

Both have served as great reminders of what God has done. How He has redeemed my past, how He has himself restored me, and made me strong, firm, and steadfast.

This blog has definitely been a way to mark the milestones in my life, and I am so glad that you are going on the journey with me, and that you can see and celebrate the milestones with me!