As humans, our relationship with our past can be very complex. Decisions we have made, comments that were said to us, experiences we have faced, all shape us not just in those moments but for long to come. I know few people who have found a healthy balance in their relationship with their own past.

We are familiar with the distinction between the people who chose to run from their past vs those who chose to face it. From comparing these two responses, we tend to view facing it as automatically healthy. In reality, while facing your past is the essential first step to not allowing it to control and dictate your future, looking back at your past does not automatically make your approach “healthy”.

I will say, as long as you choose to run from your past you are allowing it to have control over you. The lies you think you are fighting by ignoring are still being given free rein in your mind. You haven’t chosen freedom if you think the only way to freedom is to hide from what you have done or what has been done to you. I promise, neither of those have final say over you, but you do need to face them.

Within the context of facing your past, however, I have come to the conclusion that there is a necessary distinction to be made between dwelling and wrestling.

Dwelling leads to shame.

Wrestling leads to freedom.

What I mean here is that just focusing on your past does not result in healing or growing from it. I have been personally challenged on this. We don’t have to pay penance for the mistakes we have made in the past by thinking about them for the rest of our lives. We do need to wrestle through why we made those choices, owning that we did, and making plans to break that cycle from repeating.

Similarly, what has been done to us does not define us. I say this coming from a place where I used to view myself very heavily through a lens of what had happened to me. I felt as though my victimhood required me to take it on as a part of my identity in order to reconcile the weight of what I had experienced. I think for me a large part of this was because I felt so unseen in what I had experienced that I was desperate for others to acknowledge what I had gone through. If what I had experienced was now a part of who I was, and not just my story, wouldn’t that then require others to face and acknowledge it? The reality of that brokenness was heavy and constant for me. It felt so isolating. I felt so missed by others. I was struggling to process what had happened to me. In a way, I felt like if I owned it I was taking back power over it, but I now see that turning that into my identity still gave it power over me.

Wrestling through those battles has moved my perspective. I can still say that what happened to me was horrible, but it no longer defines me. It is a part of my story, and I would not be who I am today without it being a part of that, but it does not define who I am. Who I am has been defined by who God created me to be. He created me resilient and that is what I am. In similar ways I have had to wrestle through decisions I have made in my past that I am not proud of. I can own it - I was a jerk in some people’s stories, and the reason I can own that is because God’s mercy doesn’t leave me there. His redemption covers the worst of what I have done, and out of His mercy He is continuing to grow and shape me. I am not that same person, even if that is the person some people will always know me as.

Your past doesn’t have any power when you put it into God’s hands. When you truly find your identity in Him and experience His grace and redemption the enemy can’t touch you through your past any longer. This doesn’t mean there won’t still be consequences we will need to live through or that others won’t still see your past, but it does mean your hope is in something so immeasurably greater that any of that pales in comparison. When we have wrestled with God it suddenly doesn’t matter the same what others think.