"...your history is no less important to your survival than your ability to breathe. In the end, you can only determine whether to saturate your memories with pain or with perspective. Forgetting is not an option. I tell you the truth now: Pain was not God's plan for this life. It is a reality, but it is not part of the plan." - Ted Dekker

     Every day, I look back on my past and wonder what things would be like if I'd chosen a different path. If there is a way to make all the pain of my actions disappear. I wonder what it would be like to forget it all, and start anew. However, all these thoughts disappear when I realize that if those things did happen, I would not be ME.

     C.S. Lewis says, "God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way." It's not God who made the choices, it's not God who inflicted the pain upon me, and it was never part of God's plan for me to do those things. He did allow me to do those things though, because if He hadn't I wouldn't have learned.

     Yes, I could have made different choices. Yes, I could have not experienced the pain I did and still do. Yes, things would have been different. No, I would not still be the same person. I would not be ME.

     My history is a part of me, just like my every breath. My history has made me who I am, and causes me to make the choices I do. My history is not something I can change, and it is definitely not something I could/should change. 

     Changing my past would make life much easier at times, I'll admit. Also, I'll admit, my past causes pain. Each morning, though, I can make the choice to hand all that pain to God and let him carry me through the day.

     I can not forget, but I can remember. I can remember, and choose to allow it to help for the betterment of things. I can remember that I am no longer the person I once was, but that without my past I would not be who I was today. Most of all, I can remember that I have been forgiven!

    Remember that your history is a part of you, and makes you who you are today. Remember that you have been forgiven. Remember, and let your remembrance shape who you are each and every day.