Please forgive my absence for a couple of months. Many of
my thoughts have been hard to hold on to, and many of my musings have been
unrepeatable in polite society. (Polite society – isn’t that an oxymoron, or is
society itself moronic? You get the picture!)
I come back to this forum because of an anniversary of
sorts I had last week. 1/16/2008, when I was diagnosed with Colorectal Cancer.
The cancer was removed surgically on February 20th of that year,
making me now a 10 year survivor. It’s not an anniversary of my own making.
I’ve known some survivors who have been around much longer, and some who have
passed in much less time. My continuing on is by God’s grace. (Let me just say,
however, Cancer is an evil that falls on the just and unjust. That some have
passed is not due to God “cursing” them.)
Why do we place such emphasis on dates in time?
Anniversaries, births, deaths, we all have a place to store those dates that
mean the most to us. First off, we recognize that we do live in the confines of
time, and of that only in the present. Maybe marking the passage of an
occurrence in the past, and remembering it at intervals, allows us to feel as
if we can hold on to the past, even if only a fleeting moment.
Or is it because we want to recall the emotion associated
with that event? (Joy, Shame, Anger, etc.) The event being important enough to
need to retain whatever emotion it created. Or maybe it’s simply a need to just
remember. To validate who we are by holding claim to those things that made us.
For me, I think this last one has the most meaning. 2008 was quite eventful for
me: cancer, surgery, ostomy, an introduction to an obnoxiously loud device
called a wound-vac, the equally obnoxious tacidurn tape, ostomy reversal, dealing
with work/health issues related to all that, getting ordained, losing my dad,
and any number of smaller things in between. Lots of marked out dates on the
calendar.
So we all have these stone carved historical markers in
our lives. It becomes important then how we use them. If we try to hold on to
them, without looking forward? We grasp for a past that is no longer in our
reach, and the stones become a wall to hold us in and all others out. We cannot
enjoy the present (our place in time) because we do not live there, and the
wall prevents us from going through.
If we use the past as a foundation to move forward? Then
the stones become a road, laid out one stone at a time, and each step forward
becomes possible because of each step before. Always moving forward, because if
we stop, the present becomes the past, and the stones again become a wall.
A verse to help: Philippians 3:13-14. “But one thing I do: forgetting what lies
behind, and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal
for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” The goal is
always ahead, just as we must always grow. If you don’t seem to be moving,
there are two possibilities: either God is wanting you to rest (which in Him is
also growth) or you’ve got a stone in the way that needs to be repurposed from
a wall to a road. The choice is yours.