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Remember Your Past For A Healthy Present

Remember Your Past For A Healthy Present

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Reading time: 3 minutes

How does remembering your past help you today? Think of re-membering as bringing scattered parts of your life together. It’s like gathering the parts of a jigsaw puzzle and assembling them where they belong.

God wants you to see the whole picture of who you are. Have you ever worked on a puzzle only to get to the end and realize some pieces are missing? It’s frustrating because it feels so incomplete.

I’m fascinated by my past. I’m not thinking of historical facts. I mean my psychological and emotional journey. Memories are important because they are the key to setting a person free from being trapped in the past.

You can’t change what has happened to you but you can change its meaning. You decided how much a particular memory has the power to define who you are. They answer the question: How did I get to where I am today?

How you first experience something has long-lasting implications. Your journey is, in many ways, a series of first-time experiences. To put the pieces of your life together, you must revisit your first-time experiences to create follow-on experiences. Healing can be both strengthening the positive memories and weakening the negative ones.

Questions to Help You Remember

Your relationship with your childhood memories can tell you a lot about yourself. Here are some questions you can use to explore your emotional health:

  • How do you feel about your childhood?
  • Do you feel like you are still a child?
  • Do you feel like you are stuck in your childhood?
  • Do you feel extremely distant from childhood, almost like it was another lifetime?
  • Does childhood feel real to you or more like a fantasy?
  • Does childhood seem unimportant or highly relevant to you?
  • Do you remember a lot or a little?
  • How much was childhood the same or different every day?
  • What positive memories come to mind?
  • What negative memories come to mind?

Did you skim through these questions or pause on each one and give a real, in-depth answer? Are you willing to embrace your childhood or do you think you’d be happier if you never thought about it again?

Even if you considered only one of the questions, you’ve got a taste of what it’s like to move toward emotional health. You dipped your toe in the water. If you considered more than one, you might feel overwhelmed as you swim in a pool of emotional memories.

As I said, memories are fascinating. They aren’t part of who you are. Yet, in another way, they are part of you. You’re not five years old anymore. But you might feel five years old sometimes.

Remember the Past, Compare it with the Present, and Plan the Future

Here are a few more questions for you to consider: In what ways do you feel the same, today, as you did when you were a young child? In what ways are you the same? In what ways are you different?

Life can lead you away from being in touch with who you are. The pressures, demands, and trauma open a chasm between your performance and who you are. It’s possible to become so familiar with present-day performance (life responsibilities) that you forget what it’s like to enjoy life on your terms.

Here are three more questions that should help you “pull yourself together.” What day would you most like to relive? What makes life worth living today? Now, what new day do you imagine you would like to live in the near future?

In answering all these questions, look for two things. First, look for any infections: emotional wounds that haven’t fully healed. Second, look for peak experiences: emotional highs that give you energy.

If you’d like more practice at developing follow-on experiences, then you should try a book from my Journal Your Way series.

More about the benefits of exploring your past.
Image by Nato Pereira from Pixabay
Last updated 2022/12/11

Your Struggle Is Related To Childhood

Your Struggle Is Related to Childhood

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Reading time: 3 minutes

Struggles come in all shapes and sizes. You can struggle physically, mentally, emotionally, and even spiritually. Physical struggles are related to health and endurance. Mental struggles are about grasping concepts and reality. Emotional struggles are a focus on the intensity of pain caused by the negatives of life (loss resulting from sin). Spiritual struggles involve the ability to discern the truth from falsehood.

All struggles are likely related to childhood events because people are most vulnerable then. Even though we struggle, spiritual rebirth allows believers to love God will all aspects of their being.

And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.”

Matthew 22:37-38 ESV

Optical Illusions Are a Perceptional Struggle

Optical illusions are fun. They work because of assumptions about reality. To some degree, you will perceive what you want to perceive. Sometimes that aligns with reality and sometimes it doesn’t. Either way, after you see past the illusion, it’s difficult to be tricked again.

Your consciousness is similar to an optical illusion. You have meaningful events buried beneath the surface of awareness. The significant events are rich with life lessons and strong feelings. As you intentionally uncover the significance of your history, it becomes harder to ignore unless you are determined to avoid it.

Becoming in touch with your uncomfortable memories promotes healing. This can seem counter-intuitive until you realize that to not be in touch with your history is to be in denial. What is distressing tends to stay buried unless you are determined to be healthy.

Jesus Calls Those Who Struggle

As you probably know, there is a tension between wanting everything just to be okay and admitting everything isn’t okay.

Jesus answered them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners and need to repent.”

Luke 5:31-32 NLT

Many of your childhood struggles continue to play out in your everyday interactions. You just don’t realize it unless you look intentionally. Without some prompting, it’s easy to leave pain buried. You might think you are better off leaving sleeping giants undisturbed.

A decade or two isn’t enough time to fully resolve life’s challenges. Chances are, whatever you struggled with as a child, you still struggle with today. Ideally, you struggle with it to a lesser degree. But there’s no shame in noticing you continue to struggle. It is possible to both make significant progress and realize you are essentially the same person you were as a child.

Feelings Reveal The Real Struggle

Everyone has to overcome their fear of inadequacy if they want to grow. Don’t be surprised and discouraged when you experience some of the same feelings you had during your younger years. Instead, see this as a positive sign that you are strong enough to look clearly at how you are responding to life.

How you respond reveals a lot about yourself that you need to know if you want to continue healing. This works for both positive and negative emotions.

Positive emotions can tell you what you’ll naturally be drawn to. They can get you into a trap just as easily as negative ones if you’re not vigilant. For example, people who notice they feel great when they win might be tempted to gamble for a chance to win big.

Negative emotions tell you what you want to avoid. They become a trap when they take center stage. For example, people who fear competition might become so consumed with failure, that they avoid trying.

Spend time noticing what makes you exceptionally happy, sad, angry, or anxious. Then make connections with your earlier experiences. What themes do you see? Your consistency over time likely defines your personality.

Learn more about exploring childhood to be healthy.
The picture that goes with today’s post contains an optical illusion. I found it on the internet. Apparently, it was popular around 2014.

How To Live With Rejection

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Reading time: 3 minutes

Confidence is the antidote to rejection. It’s easy to think that confidence is only something other people can have. But you can have it too. The secret to confidence is to stop trying to be something you’re not.

Living with the excruciating pain of rejection is hard. Some people would rather be physically beaten than be emotionally beaten.

Does anyone in the world like you? Does anyone want to spend time getting to know you? Does anyone appreciate you? Does God? If you answer these questions “no” then you are living with the oppressive feeling of rejection.

Rejection, though it feels real, is more of an illusion than a reality, if you know Jesus. God knew you before you were born. Jesus redeemed you from all sin that separated you from God. God accepts you exactly as you are.

But this doesn’t mean you won’t struggle with rejection. You have experienced some rejection and you’ll experience some more. To gain confidence, you must learn to not care about the rejection that others direct your way.

Rejection can easily become a downward spiral. None of us knows who we are as much as God knows who we are. The more you’ve experienced rejection, the more you’ve probably gone into hiding. The more you are in hiding, the more people are rejecting the false you (because you are keeping the real you out of sight). But it will still feel like people are rejecting the real you, so you end up hurting more and hiding more.

There is no good reason for anyone to reject the best parts of you that come from God. Therefore, rejection has to do with being misunderstood rather than being defective. I would guess people with obvious disabilities experience this all the time in a much more direct way. How frustrating it is to be judged superficially. How frustrating to be judged instantly and only based on your performance in one moment rather than your potential.

How much have you become your own worst enemy? If you struggle with rejection, you struggle to understand who you really are. If you’ve stopped wanting to know the real you, it will be difficult for others to see you (as in “I see you” from the movie Avatar).

God sees your potential. Your potential comes from your heart, from who God made you to be. He sees you at your best even when you look your worst. You have the best qualities that God placed in you.

But the Lord said to Samuel, “Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

1 Samuel 16:7 NLT

If you struggle with low self-worth, you might be quick to focus on the negative part of this verse. You might be thinking, “But God rejected Eliab, so that means He most likely rejects me.”

God has the right to choose whoever He wants for what He wants to accomplish. God can’t make everybody king. Just because you are rejected for one thing, doesn’t mean you are completely rejected. God will reject you for everything He doesn’t have planned for your life. But this also means He accepts you for all the good things He has planned.

So don’t worry so much about rejection. You’ll probably be rejected 99 times out of a 100. But it’s that 1 out of 100 that matters. You only need 1. Cling to the truth that God accepts you as you are, for the purposes He has for you. Ask God to help you understand your purpose and forget about what He hasn’t chosen you for.

Image by Ulrike Leone from Pixabay

Surviving On The Fringe

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Reading time: 3 minutes

Are you on the fringe? Fringe means “to be on the outskirts.” That can be good or bad depending upon what it at the center.

Last week I wrote about feeling on the outskirts of God and what He is doing in the world. But what if we flip that around and define fringe as being on the outskirts of what the world is doing? Then being on the fringe would be a good thing.

Jesus lived on the fringe while He was on earth. The leaders at the time expected Him to join them in their agenda. But Jesus certainly lived as if not engrossed in the world:

What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they do not; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.

1 Corinthians 7:29-31 NIV

If you find yourself depressed and anxious about what is happening in the world, maybe you are too deeply engrossed? What is too engrossed? This means living as if this life is all there is. If it were all there is, you’d have to put your full hope in it. You’d have no other choice.

If you are holding too tightly to this world, you’re going to feel discouraged. You’re going to be worried because this world in its present form is passing away. But, there is another option besides hoping in this world.

If you are in Christ, you are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). God has separated you out from this world. He’s brought you to the fringe. He’s sent you into the world to help it, not to be engrossed in it (1).

Don’t love the world or anything that belongs to the world. If you love the world, you cannot love the Father. Our foolish pride comes from this world, and so do our selfish desires and our desire to have everything we see. None of this comes from the Father. The world and the desires it causes are disappearing. But if we obey God, we will live forever.

1 John 2:15-17 CEV

Jesus had no place to lay His head (Luke 9:58). Of course, this doesn’t mean that He never slept lying down. It means He didn’t ever settle down as if this was His permanent home.

Sure – it’s okay to own a home and live in it. More important that where you live is how attached you are to your life in this world. It’s impossible to be completely satisfied with this world. If you try to find your life somewhere in the world, you will feel empty and disappointed.

But if you join Jesus at the fringe, you will find your life and you’ll be in good company. You can be on the fringe and not feel lonely.

If you’ve been engrossed in the world, it takes time to detach from it. At some point you have to let go of the world.

Have you ever lost something and become focused on finding it? What if you can’t find it? Eventually you have to move on. If you spend your life consumed with what you’ve lost, your life will be compromised. It won’t be all it could be.

Imagine what it feels like to let go of what you’ve lost and move on. That’s what you need to do with the world. The world isn’t as great as you thought it was. That’s good or bad depending upon how you look at it. If you can give up on finding your ultimate happiness in it, you’ll end up content and peaceful.

(1) https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/lets-revise-the-popular-phrase-in-but-not-of
Image by Paul Brennan from Pixabay

On The Fringe: The Truth About The Struggle To Belong

On The Fringe: The Truth About The Struggle To Belong

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Reading time: 3 minutes

Fringe, a TV show about weird, scientifically unexplainable events in the universe, debuted in 2008. It drew my interest at first because of the possibilities of the unknown. Because, well, exploring the mysteries of life is exciting.

“Fringe” can have a much broader definition than scientific anomalies. It has a connotation of “flaky” or “fragile.” If someone is teetering on the edge of an abyss they are on the fringe. They are one step away from slipping out of a meaningful existence. They are like Frodo when he puts on the evil ring; he must fight to not be drawn into the shadow world.

Non-Christians are on the Fringe

Without Christ, it’s easy to become lost in an endless pursuit of mysterious unknowns. Maybe there is something of substance beyond the fringe? Maybe an alien race is monitoring our every move. What else is out there?

You can become hooked on the lottery for the same reasons. Having lots of money sounds good, so it must be a good idea to buy into the lottery. I’ve got nothing else to do. I’ve got nothing to lose. — even though the odds of winning are small. You might say you have a fringe of a chance.

The craving to seek and discover is a good (God-given) desire. However, some people will tenaciously pursue strange, made-up phenomena, while at the same time refusing to acknowledge the existence of a real God that cries out to them through His creation.

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

Romans 1:20 NIV

One definition of fringe is being “at the part of something that is farthest from the center.” This describes non-Christians quite well. They are present, able to see but choosing to face away from the center and pursue the outermost fringes of God’s creation. They keep hoping to find the fulfillment of their inner hunger in anything but God.

Are You, Christian, on The Fringe?

Another definition of fringe is “not completely belonging to or accepted by a group of people who share the same job, activities, etc.” It’s possible to be a Christian and know Christ, but still feel like you are on the fringe. This shouldn’t be so.

Do you feel like you are on the fringe? Are you hanging in the balance? Do you know you have worth, but can’t seem to feel your true worth in Christ?

Christ calls all who belong to Him to move toward Him. Because of His awesome sacrifice, all who are far away from the center are able to move toward the center.

Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Hebrews 4:16 NIV

“I am weird” and “I am worthless” are lies. Just because others don’t understand you (even other Christians) or you haven’t found a way to meet your needs doesn’t mean you are fringe material. Every one of God’s people belongs.

Living according to God’s plan for you means you will need to walk a different path than others walk. You have God’s favor as you walk on the path He made for you (see John 21:20-23).

God smiles as He thinks of you. God is always thinking about you. God is smiling at you. Look up to see His face.

Those who look to him for help will be radiant with joy;
    no shadow of shame will darken their faces.

Psalm 34:5 NLT

Learn more about belonging.
More on the TV show at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fringe_(TV_series)
Definition from https://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/on-the-fringes-of-something
Image by Aravind kumar from Pixabay

God Is Perfect

God Is Perfect

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Reading time: 4 minutes

Perfection is the highest quality of being which God has never needed to attain. He has always been perfect and always will be exceptional. How do you feel about God? Would you say your experiences lead you to conclude God is the standard of perfection? How much do you trust Him? Nothing is more important than your trust in God.

If there were one truth to rule them all it would be, “God is perfect.” The person who believes this has a strong, unstoppable faith. Try an experiment. Consider God as thoroughly perfect. Recognize how amazing He is. See Him for who He is. How much can you trust the God you envision? Has your hope increased?

When I think of God as perfect, it starts to correct my image of Him. I feel more positive toward Him and then I feel more hopeful. If you can’t believe He is perfect, you may feel discouraged because of difficult life events.

Is God Perfect?

Do you ever find yourself resisting the idea that God is perfect? It can be easy to doubt God is perfect. Globally, many difficult things have happened, are happening, and will continue to happen (in this life). It’s the “continue to happen” that makes it easy to doubt.

Can God be perfect if He allows bad things to continue to happen? This question causes many people to stumble in their faith. God has reasons for doing what He does that we might never completely understand.

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord.
    “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.
For just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so my ways are higher than your ways
    and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

Isaiah 55:8-9 NLT

If you seriously doubt God, you move into a place of judgment. Putting God on trial is the beginning of the end. Nothing good can come from distancing yourself from the only one who can help you. I discuss this and more in my book, To Identity and Beyond.

Until we are in heaven, life will continue to be a struggle. This life is all we know. What happens can have a profound effect on how you see God. Some evidence will support a loving God and others might not. We need to be able to consider God as perfect despite any negative evidence.

Regardless of how good or bad life seems, you have a powerful choice. Will you devote your allegiance to God or turn away from Him in discouragement or disgust? Will you align your spirit with His Spirit? If you refuse, you will experience some natural consequences. Consider what it would be like to be separated from God, your creator, who knows you from head to toe. It makes no sense to give up on God.

Believing God Has Faults Harms You

If God is perfect then failing to believe and act accordingly is harmful. All of us may experience a deterioration in our health to the degree we live like God is imperfect. That’s eye-opening!

Believing God is imperfect and then failing to trust Him carries with it consequences like:

  • Increased fear, anxiety, and worry
  • Increased need for control
  • Increased desire to be self-sufficient
  • Increased isolation and loneliness
  • Increased despair
  • Increased frustration and anger

Can it be any other way? If God had faults, how could we trust Him to keep His word 100% of the time? Perfection deserves our full trust.

But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength.
    They will soar high on wings like eagles.
They will run and not grow weary.
    They will walk and not faint.

Isaiah 40:31 NLT

Meditate on God’s Perfection

Try an experiment this week. Remind yourself of God’s perfection. Whenever you set your mind on God, think about how perfect He is. Notice how you feel. If you feel negative, that’s probably an indicator of some spiritual work you need to do. If you feel more positive, notice how that changed for you. What changed? Trust God despite what happens and you will be blessed.

After you try this for a week, check on what insights you gained about God and yourself. Do you feel more peaceful and hopeful?

Learn more about the consequences of bad theology.
Last updated 2025/01/19