Leave the Past in the Past

It's 3:00 in the morning ... again. This time I'm thinking about the past. Past mistakes, past decisions. Where did I go wrong? What would have happened if I had said "no" instead of "yes"? If I had taken the proverbial right instead of left? It's enough to drive you bonkers.

Do you know the Oprah segment, "What I know for sure"? She talks about the life lessons she has learned and passes on her wisdom in these little segments.

Here's mine: the past is the past.

It's done. It's over. You can't change it. No matter how hard you try to change it, it stays the same. You can worry over it, fret over it, bang your head on a wall over it, slap yourself on the forehead in a what-was-I-thinking gesture and it still won't change. You can ask God "Why?" until you are blue in the face, but one thing is certain: you're going to have to learn to live with the past.

For the longest time I used to believe that I was being tested. And how I did on the "test" would determine if I would pass the test or have to get tested again. The problem is that while you are being tested you don't know you're being tested and the test changes each time you take the test so you can't recognize immediately that you are being tested because most likely the test doesn't contain the same subject matter as the previous test(s).

It's the Kobiashi-Maru -- the "no win" scenario.

It actually sounds like a bad dream I have every once in a while. You know that dream: you're in school and can't find your locker, and nobody else knows where it is, but you have to get to class because you have a test, and you forgot to study because you left your book in your locker, but you can't find your locker ...

Sorry, I digress.

So while you are being "tested" you're supposed to be learning something, right? Isn't that what our teachers always told us--why we always reviewed the questions after a test to see what the answer was supposed to be? Recognizing what the life lessons are from something that has happened previously, whether good or bad, is like reviewing the answers after a test. It's important to our growth as human beings, but it can be difficult.

You can't change the past, whether it be life lessons or hard fought truths about yourself; but, like the tests you reviewed in school, you can learn from the stuff you got wrong. Sometimes you get it right away and, unfortunately, sometimes the whole process can take years.

I get a lot of thinking done while I am walking my dogs. It's something about the rhythm of my footsteps on the pavement that send my controlled mind into retrospective, clarity-driven thought. "What was the lesson I was to learn," rolls around in my brain for years and then recent events from a recent "test" will turn on a light bulb and I will get the connection.

I also notice that people tend to blame their parents for a lot of stuff, too. I think this keeps Dr. Phil in business. While I know people who have legitimate complaints about their parents, the rest of us need to realize a couple of things.

When I want to blame my mother or father for something they did or didn't do, it's helpful to put the "human" factor into your equation. Try to remember that your parents were human and I'm guessing that they were trying to get through their life the best way they knew how ... just like you and I are. As a parent, I hope I am offered the same courtesy.

As a mother there were a few things I did wrong as my child was growing up. Inevitably, there were things that my mother probably thought she did wrong, too; and her mother before her. And I can sit and blame my parents for things they didn't do, and dwell on it, or I can learn from their mistakes and change the way I do things.

It doesn't do any good to beat up my mother or myself over the past. Learn from it.

Captain Kirk beat the Kobiashi-Maru by reprogramming the test itself so he could beat the no-win scenario. While we don't have that luxury, we can reprogram how we react to something. When facing the insurmountable I have learned to turn my trust to God. That's my reprogramming of the test. Because deep down, I think all "tests" are meant to teach us to turn to and depend on God.

So the next time you catch yourself suffering through another rerun of your past, try to think of what you learned from that experience, and turn your thoughts toward the present and the future. It's much more pleasant to think about what you have today than what you missed in your yesterdays.

As Joyce Meyer would say, "I'm not where I want to be, but thank God I'm not where I used to be."

When Expectations Don't Match Reality

What do you want to be when you grow up? While I'm still trying to answer that question, recent events have made me realize that life looks a lot different now then it did when I was little.

When I was little I wanted to be lots of different things: horse trainer, mathematician, astronomer, veterinarian, geologist. My love of animals, the outdoors, and of numbers came through in how I thought I would spend my grown-up life.

When I graduated from high school and ended up working instead of going to college, my dreams of any job that required a higher education were put by the wayside.

Then marriage and more working; and it wasn't until I was in my late twenties that I decided that I wanted to have a family--and a big one at that. I loved the good old-fashioned role of housekeeping where my inner Martha Stewart would come out. However, fate didn't have that in the cards for me as it's hard to have a lot of children when you're divorced (not impossible, mind you, but not how I envisioned it), and working full-time kept me out of school.

Being single throughout the rest of my child-bearing years cemented the fact that I would only end up with one child and not six; but that's okay because as a single person I have learned how to be self-sufficient and I was able to shower my attentions on one child.

More than anything, however, I want to spend time with family. While that has nothing to do with what I want to be when I grow up, it does have to do with what the picture in your head of your adult life looks like as you grow up.

Spending the holidays in a home surrounded by family and in the midst of countless holiday traditions are my "visions of sugarplums" that dance in my head. Expectations had me wishing for one thing. Reality, however, turned out quite differently.

As my family has become scattered across the globe and their family dynamics have them pulled in different directions for the holidays, I find myself spending a lot of time alone trying not to think about everyone else surrounded by their families.

So what do you do when your expectations don't match reality? You change your expectations to something that's more attainable.

For example: I have a friend from church who didn't want to stress herself too much over the holidays because her job was changing and she had a lot to think about. So she chose to spend Thanksgiving in reflection and meditation. She got some much needed answers and was thankful for the time alone.

For me, while I do get to spend some time with my family, I also spend much of the holidays with friends and their families. It's starting new traditions with my best friend like having a cookie decorating day (or days) and sharing the grocery shopping madness together before each of the holidays.

I have also learned to change my definition of "family". Those I consider family now, while not related by blood, are related to me by the experiences and friendships that we share.

The holidays are tough on those of us who are alone. As long as we manage our expectations we should be able to get through all this craziness in one piece.