Redefining the Past

Telling a New Story

Have you ever wished you had a time machine so you could turn back the calendar a few years and change something? Take back those hurtful words? Escape that bad relationship? Pursue the career you loved?

We may not be able to hop into a time machine, but you do have access to a bit of past-changing magic: remembrance. Remembrance gives us the grace of distance. Remembrance allows us to re-narrate past trauma or regret without denying the pain. Remembrance asks us to willfully and thoughtfully re-tell our good/hard stories with a bolded-underlined-all-caps emphasis on the hidden treasure and the triumph. We can see the thread of truth through the hard circumstances because we’ve been told the realest, deepest, truest story of all—the overarching Christ story that re-narrates death as the mere prologue to resurrection.

What we remember teaches our brains what to expect. By remembering the past thoughtfully, we can anticipate the future with hope. The past is immutable; however, the way we engage the past now—in the present—is totally up to us.