Forgetting The Former Things
To me, a new year is like a callous.
I spent the last 365 days working things out with my hands, clinging onto beliefs, and ideals, and the elements of myself until they became rough and worn. The places I hurt became used to the feeling, and a measure of success is how well I came out of the December tunnel. The breaks I struggled to understand and fix left marks; the questions I asked again, again, again grooved trenches in my spirit—and I could tell you the field is now plowed for planting, but in all honesty, I think it looks more like it has been primed for trench warfare. My shovel left callouses on all ten fingers and across the palms of my hands. I feel the rub when I pray.
So after the 12 months of work, I’m standing here in my pajamas from last year and the decision is sitting in my spot on the couch drinking coffee out of my favorite mug like, So what are you going to do about it? And I’m just not sure. Do I keep gripping and working last year’s familiar path? Or do I slough off the tough skin and start again, as a new thing with different obstacles? If the former, is all my effort lost to new resolve? If the latter, isn’t it going to hurt building up callouses, again?
I believe that a life is a trajectory. I believe in building blocks, mountain climbing, turning the page to new chapters. Some time in college I had the inevitable, adult realization that life is filled with moments that level off in temporary stability, but that there are no plateaus. You keep going up. Always. Still, with the prospect of newness comes a question: how do you decide what to leave behind and what to carry in your spirit? Isaiah 43 tells us to forget the former things. But some of my former things have created the formula for how I reason and make decisions. We learn from mistakes (those we have made and those made around us) and we let go in the sense that our circumstances do not define us. I look at it this way: my life is the drawing and the crayons I choose determine the color palette and ultimately the way it is perceived by everyone around me. The choices I make change the direction of my life, but I am always, elementally me. If I grip the steering wheel, I nosedive in the earth. The trick, I suppose, is finding altitude with both freedom in the horizon and a view of everything left below.
Ok. But what about keeping my hand to the plow? I tend to over-analyze. I tend to romanticize my callouses. I worked for them, and sometimes wounds seem like the only thing gained in trials. Why ever get rid of them? We are good at justifying pain. If we get to the end, we want answers, and restoration, and redemption, and a new box of crayons, please. Humanity has a hard time working for no reward. For me, if I struggle and prevail, I’ve at least earned the right to wallow and morn, right? And those callouses...I need those. If I get rid of them with the old pain, my armor is gone and it’s going to hurt next time I go out in the field. Can’t I just keep my hand to the plow for the rest of my life, and never look up, and never rest, and never let anyone get close to help because I’ve really got this all by myself, thank you.
Solomon claimed the end of something was better than the beginning. I never understood his logic. I always felt that there is only joy in finality because of the prospect of newness. The end of a life is a terrible thing compared to the beginning of a life, except for those who awaken in Christ. However, these days I am seeing this proverb in a different light. The end of a trial is certainly better than its beginning; the pain over, the insight gained. The end of the year can be better than the beginning of a year. It is growth, and relief, and assurance that your tangible body made it through an orbit in a spiritual universe. To set down and forget the culmination of a year’s pain does not mean you lose everything you worked for. It means you put it on the shelf, start building a reference library, start reading your future days with a new vocabulary. Your hands, your spirit are tender again. To pain, yes. To life, yes. To Christ, yes.