Past and Present

 I try to write my post on Saturday or Sunday and post Monday, and I usually write what is going on in the present and how it affects me. But once in a while I like to reach back and write from the past. The past definitely affects my present. its part of who I am as a child of God.

Growing up I just figured I would marry and live in my hometown or close by for the rest of my life. I didn't think past the present of getting out of the abusive home I grew up in. At 17 I quit school and got a full-time job washing dishes in a restaurant, real glamor. Several months later I married the guy I fell in love with. He worked in the oil field on a rig but that begin to close down. An uncle of mine got him a job in a warehouse near St. Louis, and the travel started, our world got bigger. We didn't bring much maturity into our marriage except we both knew how to work. But that is another story.

Little did I know from that point on living in my hometown for the rest of my life was not going to happen. Up until I got saved, we had lived in 3 different states already, all following his job. Fast forward to hearing a missionary speak in our home church in Kentucky where our world became bigger. God was going to show us just how big His world is and how exciting following Him can be. All the past came with us as we served 7 years in Bolivia, South America as dorm parents at a missionary boarding school. Then came a few years we stepped out of the mission to help our home church. Mission by then was in our blood so we returned to it and was asked to go a different country, Papua New Guinea. Everything we had learned so far was going to be used even more so. Remember, He waste nothing. What we were at that stage of life was defined by both, past and present still.

We were learning the truth that our past does not have to destroy us; it can be a catalyst to not make the same mistakes and be open to learning God's way of looking at the past and present and the future. The past always lives with us in the recess of our memory. I can unpack my past if it helps someone in the present. The wounds from the past are now scars and no longer hurt to touch on if needed. But the scars are part of who I am, a woman of God with scars. Salvation did not wipe out my past and through the years I have notice again, God waste nothing. It's joy to sit with a woman and have her thank me for sharing my wisdom gained from a past mistake and how God delights in using despite those mistakes. He is the only one without mistakes which is the strongest truth I can share with anyone.

Sometimes something will happen that throws me back into a bad memory and without even trying I react from it. When it does, I remind myself of everything I just wrote about. Those wounds do not own me, they have been paid for by the blood of Jesus shed on the cross. And that is where I lay them, at the foot of the cross.

How are you doing with your past and present?