The past, and why it needs to stay in the past

"Will my weakness for an hour make me suffer for a lifetime?

Is there any way to be made whole again?

If I'm healed, renewed, and find forgiveness,

Find the strength I've never had,

Will my scars forever ruin all God's plans?

Is He not strong enough?

Is He not pure enough?

To break me, pour me out, and start again.

Is He not brave enough?

To take one chance on me,

Please can I have one change to start again?

He took my life into His hands and turned it all around,

In my most desperate circumstance,

It's there I've finally found...

That You are strong enough,

That You are pure enough,

To break me, pour me out and start again.

That You are brave enough,

To take one chance on me,

Oh, thank You for my chance to start again."

- Stacie Orrico, Strong Enough.

In my first three semesters of university I was crazy. I partied and drank all the time (on a few occasions I couldn't stand), I had no passion for anything other than going out to clubs and getting absolutely plastered. Whenever we weren't drinking I'd be thinking about the next time we would, because everything else in my life was falling to pieces and it seemed to be the only thing making me feel better. But it was temporary and only numbed the pain for a little while. I'd go out and flirt with countless men, but usually not taking it any further because I knew how sleazy they all were. One night I'd drank so much I threw up on the way home and cried at my friend because I was so lonely.  I always cry when I'm sick, but there was something so broken in this. 

This was three years ago now, but somehow the wound has reopened and salt is being poured in.

I think dreams are incredibly important; they have the ability to change our outlook on life for days, sometimes even weeks and months. Last night, after a few days of trying to push my past to the back of my mind, I had a dream about something from my past. It wasn't a massive part of the dream, but it's clearly been enough to make everything sting, to make all my scars visible again. I know the devil is trying so hard to ruin my last four weeks in Stirling, to make it seem as if I'm still broken and unclean and that all my purity and innocence that God has worked so hard on has all been stripped away again.

The song I've quoted above is one I've loved since I was about thirteen years old. Back then, little did I know that those words would still mean so much to me at twenty-two. You see, I can spend all the time I want wallowing and feeling sorry for myself, trying to think about how I've changed, and how I'm different; but that's not really important. 

What's really important is the truth, and the truth is that I'm changed, I'm forgiven, I'm beautiful, I'm pure, I'm innocent, and most of all I'm loved. I'm loved by my Creator with an everlasting love that says the past is irrelevant and unimportant.

And the more that I keep telling myself that, that I keep focused on that, the less I'll worry about the past, the less I'll worry about who I was, because that is not who I am any more! 

2 Corinthians 5:17

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!"

(NIV)

I am completely new in Christ and no dream (which was really only a work of my sub conscious, not of God) can change that because no dream can change the truth, and the truth is that the old has gone! 

x