Since I am about three years from the big 60, I thought it made sense to start writing my memoir.  There is nothing glamorous about it. Yeah, it is therapeutic, but it is also hard work. To page through school and college yearbooks.  To read through 50 journals. To write the facts down correctly. To walk down memory lane. To feel the joy and the pain of yesterday. There are many pieces to assemble, like a colorful mosaic.

In one season of my life, a therapist gave me a homework assignment. He asked me to write a short, unedited account about a difficult relationship. After typing and printing 15 pages, I gave it to him. A week later he gave it back to me.  When I arrived home, I read it again. I didn’t know he had written comments in the margins.  As I read his comments, I noticed he wrote four words. However, those particular words could not be found on every page.  When I read those four words, a light bulb went off. He wrote “when God showed up”.

It was only when I looked back that I realized… “He’s right!  God DID show up THEN!” If you have been taught to “get over it” and be strong, then you probably don’t see the need to look back.  The bad part about swimming ahead along with the rapid current of our stress-filled world, is you only look at today and the future.  You forget where you have been. You may have even repressed your pain. The world says keep moving, but our soul bleeds. Where would we be if God had not intervened and showed up?! Oh, how we forget the times He carried us.

On the other hand, sometimes, it’s not always wise to look back, according to the scriptures.  Take Lot’s wife. She was told to not look back at the sin and destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, as Holy God was destroying it. He was providing a new life and a way of escape for her, but she refused to let go of her old life. She turned around. She looked back.  She perished.

As each of us face today with its own dark shades of anxiety, worry and stress, to survive, we have got to remember the faithfulness of God from our yesterdays.  He knows the broken pieces we hide in our souls today. Jeremiah wrote: “God, pick up the pieces. Put me back together again. You are my praise!” (17:14,The Message)

God knows we are waiting for the right pieces to complete our specific puzzling situation.  Only He can bring them together, and piece them together. The late Warren Wiersbe said, “God doesn’t give you all the pieces at one time, with a complete blueprint to follow.  No, He reveals His will to us a step at a time; and He supplies the necessary parts as we need them.”

What part of your life are you trusting God to put together?

pictures courtesy of “Nelson & his Nikon”