Faithfully yours - Making a fresh start in the New Year

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Published on Saturday, January 2, 2016

By Neil Strohschein

The Neepawa Banner

Well, we did it—we made it through another year. It’s been a year of changes for this country of ours—some have been positive, some have been negative and as for the rest, we won’t see the results or feel the impact of those changes for at least three or four years.

There have been changes in our families and communities. Just about everyone I know has been touched by the death of a family member, a good friend or a colleague at work. Some have died after long battles with cancer, dementia or other ailments. Some were taken from us with no warning and far, far too soon. But their memories remain; and today I echo the words of our friends in the Ukrainian tradition: “Vichnaya Pamyat—may their memories remain forever.”

As individuals, we can look back and see many things for which to be grateful. God has been good to us. True, there have been challenges and for some of us there still are. But we have been able to go through these experiences knowing that God was going through them with us, that we were not alone and that his mercy and grace helped us survive the hard times.

But I am also quite sure that there is at least one incident in each of our lives about which, after some reflection, we ask ourselves: “What was I thinking when I did that?” Those are the events we remember and unless we deal with them, they will haunt us for the rest of our lives.

So how should we deal with them? I would propose two simple steps that we can take.

Step one—Learn from them. Nothing in life ever happens by accident. The difficulties and challenges we faced in 2015 may have been a surprise to us, but they were not a surprise to God. He knew all about them. He could have stopped some of them from happening, but for reasons known only to him, he chose not to. Instead, he took what he knew would happen to us and devised a plan by which each event could help to make us better people.

No one understood this better than St. Paul, which is what led him to write these words: “We know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28) God does not send difficult times our way—he allows them to come and he asks us to learn from them.

Step two—Let them go. You and I are products of our past. Our heritage, our time in school, the books we’ve read and the experiences we’ve had have all helped make us the people we are. As we learn from our experiences, we grow in our understanding of who we are, what strengths we have, where we are prone to make mistakes and how our faith helps us to follow Jesus’ words: “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; love your neighbor as yourself.”

Once the learning is done, we have to let the past go. We can’t live in the past. We can’t turn the clock back and repeat positive experiences. And we certainly can’t let past failures cripple us and keep us from accepting new challenges or attempting great things for God. The lessons we’ve learned will give us the tools we need to succeed where we failed in the past. So we learn from our mistakes, let them go and then get on with life.