Yes, There is ALWAYS a Price
July 31
Over the last few weeks, I've noticed that I've been getting the same questions. What does it cost to get over the past and try to live again? Is that even possible? How can I ever be totally free of my past?
Honestly, there is no magic formula. There is no one size fits all plan, which by the way, is part of the problem. People cluster victims together and abusers together and survivors together. Life is not that black and white. However, there are things I did that helped me. There are things friends did that helped me. Ultimately for me, though, God was my source of strength.
There is a price for abandoning the past. You lose the ability to make excuses. You lose your comfort zone. You lose yourself in the sense that before taking authority over your life, you were a victim and identified yourself with the pain of your past. When you make a decision to live outside of what you cannot control (the past), then your life changes. It isn't an easy fight to change by sometimes nothing but sure willpower alone. If you're dreaming of everyone on the planet rallying behind you, people cheering you on every moment of the change, and being congratulated, forget about it. No. You're going to have to pick yourself up by the bootstraps and be true to yourself.
I remember one time when I was so low in the dumps that suicidal thoughts came back upon me. My pastor told me this, verbatim: "I don't raise no punks. Get yourself together." It stung. I wanted to be pampered. I wanted someone to do the hard stuff for me, or at least with me. But, his words, spoken only in love, showed me that I had to get myself together. No one else can do it for me. Wouldn't it be easy if we could outsource the pain to someone else? However, we pay for freedom because freedom isn't free. No pastors, no friends, no spouse, no children... no one can do it for us.
So, to answer your question, there is ALWAYS a price to being free from the past. But, if you pay it, you'll be glad you did. You'll be free from what you cannot change, and that is a freedom that money cannot buy!