Years ago, shortly after my divorce, I found myself spending an extraordinary amount of time looking backward. I would remember the better days of my former life, the familiar routines, the relationships, and the comfort of knowing what tomorrow might look like. Before long, I would begin imagining ways to put some of those pieces back together. Perhaps if I handled a particular situation differently, I could recover something I'd lost. Maybe if I could change a few circumstances, I could reconstruct some version of the life I'd once known.
The problem was that every scenario I entertained required me to take matters back into my own hands and manipulating others. Instead of asking God where He wanted to lead me, I was busy figuring out how to get back to where I'd already been. I was living my life in the rearview mirror, trying to return to a season God was leading me out of.
There's something incredibly powerful about the familiar, isn't there? Even when a season of our lives has been painful, we can find ourselves longing to return to it. We remember the good things, sometimes conveniently forgetting the circumstances that made us so miserable in the first place. Familiarity has a way of making the past look more appealing than it actually was, especially when the future feels uncertain.
But familiar isn't always better. Sometimes it's the very thing keeping us from moving forward.
I knew I was slipping backward because I could feel the difference in my heart. The anger I had worked so hard to surrender was returning, and the despair God had been helping me overcome was creeping back into my thoughts. Instead of looking toward the future with hope, I was looking backward with regret. God was calling me into something new, but I was still trying to find my way back to something old.
When We Take Matters Into Our Own Hands
I wonder if Sarah experienced something similar as she waited for God's promise to be fulfilled.
God had promised Abraham that he would have descendants, yet year after year passed without a child. Sarah was growing older, and the possibility of becoming a mother must have seemed increasingly remote. She knew what God had promised Abraham, but she couldn't see how it could possibly happen.
Eventually, Sarah came up with a plan. In Genesis 16, she suggested that Abraham have a child through her servant Hagar. Perhaps this was how they could finally have the family they had been waiting for. Rather than continuing to wait for God's promise to unfold, Sarah decided to take matters into her own hands.
Unfortunately, her plan brought heartache instead of the happiness she had hoped for. Conflict and resentment entered the household, and Hagar suffered as a result of the decisions made around her. What Sarah intended as a solution created an entirely new set of problems.
I can relate to that more than I'd like to admit.
There have been plenty of times when I've grown tired of waiting for God to work. I've looked at my circumstances, decided I didn't particularly like them, and started developing my own solutions. Sometimes I've even convinced myself that my plans were perfectly reasonable, never stopping to consider whether I was following God's direction or simply trying to make myself more comfortable.
Sarah couldn't see how God would fulfill His promise, so she tried to create a solution herself. I couldn't see what God had planned for my future, so I kept trying to find a way back to my past. In both situations, the temptation was to rely on our own understanding rather than trust God with what we couldn't see.
Learning to Look Forward
One of the hardest lessons I've learned in my walk with Christ is that surrender isn't always a one-time decision. Sometimes we surrender something to God on Monday and find ourselves trying to take it back by Thursday. We pray about our circumstances, tell God we trust Him, and genuinely mean it. Then something happens that makes us uncomfortable, and before we know it, we're developing another plan to regain control.
The trouble is that we can't fully embrace what God is doing in our lives while we're continually trying to reconstruct what used to be. That doesn't mean we won't miss things from our past or occasionally wish life had turned out differently. Grief is real, and some losses leave an ache that takes time to heal. Yet we have to be careful not to allow those feelings to determine the direction we're walking.
Paul reminds us in Philippians 3:13–14 that we are to forget what lies behind and reach forward toward what lies ahead, pressing on toward the goal of knowing Christ. He wasn't suggesting that we erase our memories or pretend the past never happened. Rather, he understood that following Christ requires us to keep moving toward Him instead of allowing what is behind us to hold us captive.
When I look back on those early years after my divorce, I realize how much time I spent longing for a life that no longer existed. I was so focused on what I'd lost that I sometimes struggled to recognize what God was doing right in front of me. I didn't know what my future would look like, and I certainly didn't know how God would put the pieces of my life back together.
Thankfully, I didn't have to figure it all out.
I didn't need to reconstruct my old life. I needed to trust God with the new one.
Sometimes the greatest step of faith we can take is to stop trying to return to where we've been and start trusting God with where He's leading us.
Scripture Reading
Genesis 15:1–6; Genesis 16:1–6; Philippians 3:13–14
Something to Think About
Is there an area of your life where you're trying to recreate something familiar instead of trusting God with what comes next? Are you allowing memories of the past to keep you from recognizing what He may be doing in your life today?
