Letting Go

I got my first journal when I was about six years old. I remember how it felt to have a special place for my thoughts. Someone to confide in with no filter or worry of judgment.

I would write about my day as a little girl, filling my friend, “Journal”, in about the details and to-do's of my day. As I got older, the content changed. I started expressing my feelings about the day's events. And then, at eight years old, my dad passed away and my journal became something very different.

Losing my dad quickly made me realize things aren’t forever. Things are fleeting. Time, people, relationships, age, memories. Life is not something you can really hold on to. But I tried.

I started documenting my life, expressing the ups and downs, and spilling my guts about my feelings without holding back. It was my innermost being laid out on a page. I felt like I would lose it all if it wasn’t captured somewhere concrete, immortalized on something I could tangibly hold.

It was a fearful thing to experience so much life and think it could just disappear. Kind of like a “Pics or it didn’t happen” kind of thing. If I don’t write it down, will I forget? And if I forget, what happens to me? Will I lose myself?

Over the years, I would journal on and off. Mostly about the negatives. There were some fun memories and positive outcomes I would quickly jot down, but my heart truly needed a place to let out and process the confusing, the dark, and the sad. So the pages were filled, and the next journal was purchased.

When I met my now-husband, I had a journal that I had written in through multiple relationships and many life changes. A failed engagement, a failed venture across the country for love, cryptic writings about depression, struggles with alcohol, and heartbreaking poems. It was a dark time. So I decided that, although the pages weren’t full, this was a new story. So I bought a new journal.

I still wrote about my struggles and the new challenges of marriage, but with my newfound love and newfound happiness, the writings were different. I had hope. I had real joy to speak of, and I did. I loved writing about the wonderful things he did for me, how he reflected Christ’s unconditional love, and how I longed to love him well.

Still, last year I hit a dark patch. My old heart seemed to return. The one that feared I would forget. I would get those old journals out just to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything… forgotten who I was. More accurately, though, I was reading my old journals not to be reminded of who I WAS, but to remind myself of who I AM.

I don’t know why, but I was scared to let go of that past. Like something special lived there. A big part of me that I couldn’t let go of, or I wouldn’t have as much “matter” anymore. I would be less, void, more hollow. Just like I felt when my daddy died.

Then one day I got those journals out again. I read through almost every single page of them all. Time and time again I felt the burn and sting of pain, shame, disappointment, and even fear. And over and over again I thought “I didn’t remember that, and I wish I had let myself forget.”

I reached the final page of my last journal, and in that moment God impressed on my heart this revelation that my past isn’t “who I am”. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t the “matter” that I am made up of. I didn’t need to keep putting myself through this. I didn’t need all those memories. Although “what was” had a part in “what is”, those things have no part in “what will be”. They don’t matter when you move forward. And they have to be released to move on.

I didn’t need to hold on to “what was” because it was time to let go, and I was choosing to step into what could be! As long as I felt I had to hold on to those stories, those painful bits of history, as long as I felt I was not allowed to forget, I would always live there. I would always hold those things over myself. I would always mix in a little past pain into the present moment, tainting it. No matter how good the present really was, I would continue to remain in the past.

So I was finally ready to let go. I was ready to burn the journals, be freed of the weight, freed from the responsibility to remember.

It seemed to happen in an instant, but in truth it was a long, slow, gentle, but challenging walk with God. Taking every thought, fear, hurt, and expectation to Him. Letting His word rewire my mind and unwrite what had been written.

He changed my past. He rewrote the story and held the pages. What once seemed like part of my identity now had no part of me. What once defined my capabilities and possibilities no longer had a say. What once reminded me that I am broken now could not stand up to the truth that I am whole.

God’s words replaced my own. He says He remembers our sins no more. If the God of all creation, the perfect judge, the One worthy to condemn can love me, treat me, and see me this way, why don’t I? If He says that the identity for those in Christ is not ourselves but the righteousness of Jesus, why must I hold on to who I was as if that is still who I am? If God says He will make all things new, why hold on to the old? If He says He is my vindicator, why hold on to past offenses? If He says there is joy in eternity then I can’t take any of that with me anyway. If it’s not coming with me, then it’s not the true me.

I burned those journals on January 1st, 2024. I let go of who I was to become who God says I am.

We can’t be both. We can’t go where God calls us and promises to take us if we stay rooted in where we were. We can’t trust Him with our future when we shape our view of it with the past.

I had to stop defining my own story and let the story of me be the very word of God.

That old heart bubbles up still. But God’s word is pressed so deep into my heart that it can’t be moved. It can’t be ushered back to the past when He is the one holding my eternal future.