New Year's Resolve-olution

The benefits of inspection are never disputed when it comes to buildings, bridges, automobiles, media claims, baked goods or facebook posts. Why then, do we hesitate when it comes to inspecting things in our pasts that need attention?  Do we see no value in our lives going forward?  Is there nothing amiss in our thinking process?  Or maybe we believe nothing can be done to resolve those things that haunt our past, hinder our present and threaten to hi-jack our future. 

With my energy reserves dwindling by the decade I feel the need to prove is lessened as well. Some might call it lowering the standard. I call it picking battles wisely.  This has led me to take a page from Hebrew tradition, ‘one goes forward by looking back’.  Think rowing a boat.  A person faces where they’ve been while making every effort to get to where they want to go. 

Everyone carries from their pasts things they don’t know what to do with and the older they get, the more rancid those things become.  It’s time to put those things wherever they belong.  Like a song that gets stuck in your head, never finding the note that resolves the melody, there are thoughts, regrets, ideas, disappointments, failures, expectations, injustices, lies and hurts that need to find the note that will silence them in our minds as well.  It’s time for a resolve-olution.

Albert Einstein said, "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."  How do we expand our thinking?  It requires help from someone else; someone with whom you feel safe. This someone doesn’t need to control you or your process. They need to be a friend who believes the best in you while walking with you through times when you were/are at your worst.  That person is able to offer truth packaged in love.  It’s a tall order.   Jesus is that friend.  

The next time one of those things - that you’ve never known how to resolve - finds its way into your consciousness ask yourself if you want to continue letting it poison your present and spoil your future. If the answer is ‘no’, then ask The Lord to help expand your thinking so you can know how to best resolve your past.  Then do what He impresses you to do!  Your resolved past insures a brighter future.