Open up & Let go! But Avoid it
Have you ever experienced having a very good and exciting day, then all of a sudden, you remembered something from the past and you suddenly find yourself in a very bad or sad mood? It may be something you did a while ago or something that happened to you sometime in the past.
It happens severally especially when you come in contact with something or someone whose very sight paints a fresh picture of the past in your mind. It may be the ex-boyfriend that beat daylight out of you after you had spent three precious years giving him all you could ever give including your body up to the extent of even aborting your first child for him, or the one that impregnated you and chased you out of his sight like a strange dog. Such memories can be really painful indeed. Just imagine you walking into your husband’s office and seeing him unknowingly having lunch with such a guy. How would you feel?
The past has a voice and its whispers are so sharp in piercing the heart and causing deep pains to a victim, who is more often than not, forced to just cry within and pretend without as though nothing is happening. A painful past can bring sudden tears to someone who was just laughing and playing five minutes ago. One single whisper from your past can destabilize you for a whole month and dry up your joyful countenance within seconds. What are those whispers mostly about?
For an HIV patient, it’s about the man and the day she got infected, how she was so foolish and how she could have avoided it, how she was previously warned and the dread of a miserable death. For a barren wife, its about the abortions she had made in time past. For a young lady, its mostly about the stupid boy that deceived her, abused, raped, cheated or misused her. It could also be something terrible she did way back in the past. It’s amazing how some of the careless excitements and pleasures we give ourselves to today will be the same thing that would cause painful regrets in the good days to come as they usher painful whispers of memories into our minds. It seems like no matter the happiness you have in life, it would keep being temporary until you have fully and properly dealt with the painful whispers from your past. What is it that you are doing now, that you would regret you did tomorrow?
The Bible says “the blood of Abel (killed by his brother Cain) speaks” (speaking judgement, condemnation, e.t.c) just like the blood of every aborted child. The problem is that no matter how much you silence that voice you still hear its painful whispers until you properly handle it God’s way. How can you deal with these past and get free from all its pains?
The first thing is that you can avoid it today. You can avoid doing something that would throw you into a lifetime of struggling with its memories. You can avoid having a relationship that you would hate to remember. You can avoid revealing your nakedness in sin with a guy that would disgrace you with it. You can avoid sleeping with someone that would eventually discard you like a leaf. You can avoid sexually transmitted diseases. You can avoid HIV. You can avoid aborting God’s precious children. You can avoid doing shameful things that would tear your marriage into pieces in the days of your glorious future. Taking another man’s child into your husbands house is manageable but sincerely, you can avoid it. You can avoid the pains of the past. You can avoid it today!
One of these days, you would know better. Don’t allow your present ignorance to destroy your profile before you become matured or sensible enough to value it. Deciding to live a sexually moral and pure life, doing courtship God’s way, after loosing your womb to several abortions is still good; but it would have been better you made the decision before. Imagine where you would have been by now if you hadn’t wasted several years of your life in unfruitful trial by error relationships. At 30, you often find ladies still searching for a relationship, all because someone drank their first love like a can of coke, squeezed it and threw it away after an unredeemable number of years.
Despite all these, you still find people saying “I will still give my life to Christ in total devotion, it’s just a matter of time”. I wish they knew how so many people who said it yesterday wished they had given their life to Christ that very same day and not have had to go through all they went through. I have heard many such people say in regret, “I wish I met God earlier” Why can’t you give your life to Christ today? In fact, why not now? The stripper or the harlot who had a change of heart and devoted her life to Christ can understand this urgency better, especially when she now has her naked pictures in magazines everywhere. Did you hear the story? Three UNIPORT ladies stripped completely naked and with beautiful smiles posed their private parts for digital pictures in the heat of sexual excitement with a white man. Unfortunately the ladies stole the man’s dollars after the show forgetting that he had taken their pictures. In revenge, the man distributed the pictures on the internet showing their naked privies with their smiling faces. The mails were sent to the UNIPORT admin and from box to box. Somehow I got to see it in Abuja. Believe me, I couldn’t stand the sight neither did I dare to keep it in my e-box.
Watch out for the romantic pictures you are snapping with men in sinful relationships, those pictures you carelessly place on Hi5 (internet), brandishing your body in romantic pictures with a man who will eventually not marry you. Watch out! because by the time he throws you out, you may not be able to tear all those pictures except your own copies.
It is better never to do something, you know that a positive decision, in the future, will make you keep regretting. The worst thing to do against your future is to enjoy today at its expense or to prefer to suffer pain tomorrow rather than to deprive yourself of a little pleasure today. Never forget this: Tomorrow has thousands of days, today is just a few hours. You can avoid the pains of the past. You can avoid it today. You can live a life completely free of them. It is possible!
What about the past that is simply caused by the wickedness of another? The pains of a past rape incident or the pains of any abuse of whatsoever form. It could even be the pains of a loss (e.g. loss of a loved one, loss of an eternal value or valuable e.t.c) or an offence caused by someone. In this case, the Bible says, He came to give us joy in place of the spirit of heaviness. The first thing to do to help your heart in this case is to find someone you can open up to. Note that SOV would be willing to help in this regard. Bottling up hurts and painful experiences is not the solution to it at all. It has never worked and it will never work although it brings a temporary relief. You need to tell someone you can so trust (not the whole world). You need to uncover it and let it go. Forgive where there are offences and let go.
Let go! Unfortunately so many ladies are crying inside. There’s a hurt somewhere, a broken heart, a wounded trust, a painful sexual abuse and one painful secret or the other. All these bound up within the soft tissues of the feminine human heart. Note that, that heart was not designed to cope with all these, little wonder it breaks down so easily.
Go to the Psychiatric hospitals and conduct a statistical sampling on the root cause of many a mental misbehavior. How amazing it is to find out that they are all pointing to the same thing: Broken trusts, un-appeased anger, un-revenged pains, wounded hearts, maltreated and jilted cases all bound up within with no vent of expression leading to deep worry and depression covered up with smiles and blushes, carefully hidden from public awareness. People die quietly and gradually in silence within alerting nobody of the struggles, pains, wounds and even deadly secrets that are gradually eating them up all because they’ld rather die trying to deal with it than cry out for help. As a matter of fact, someone reading this article right now is already dying inside! The question is: Is the silence really worth it?
What could be worth bottling up till death? Is it a rape incident? stories of past immoral lifestyle? a sexual affair with a pastor? an abortion story? Cheating on a partner? a lost womb? a baby abandoned somewhere? someone poisoned or outrightly killed? having homosexual instincts? the wickedness done to another e.g homes wrecked? men wrecked? men charmed ? What could it be? Could it be an offence you just can’t forgive? Probably a close friend that stole your boyfriend or someone that deceived or betrayed you? What could be worth dying of depression, hypertension, psychological imbalance, insecurity, unhealthy and umbalanced emotions e.t.c. Rather than burst, I counsel you to let go the pressure! Cry out for help, open up and let go!
First open up to God in repentance and ask for His forgiveness where you went wrong but after this, find someone you can open up to. You would be a prisoner of that secret until you do so. Let it go! Release yourself. Free your spirit and live long. Don’t allow any secret to keep you bound, bind it and let it go. If you continue to think, worry and feel sorry, or get angry; you would never have solved the problem one bit but rather you would be drawing yourself closer to your grave every single day. Don’t carry anger in your bossom, you’ld be the one suffering. Forgive all hurts no matter who and free yourself as you let go.
How on earth would Jesus enjoy to be called the son of David (who also committed adultery with a woman and killing her husband thereafter)? The answer is there in 2Sam12:13. David opened up, he even tore his clothes in sincere repentance. He confessed to God and to Nathan. Prior to that time, he had bottled it up and carefully covered it but thank God for David. He freed himself. The Bible says,” Whosoever covers his sins shall not prosper but whosoever confesses and forsakes them shall have mercy”. Prov.28:13, Ps.32:3-5
Wether it be a case of hurts, offences or a sinful deed you are carefully covering: Oh the relief you get when you let go! Only those who have experienced it can truly tell. It is like releasing a man already sentenced to death. You need to experience it. You need to open up, first to God but then to a Nathan (Someone who can take you through the healing process). The SOV help-lines would be available for you to pour out your heart. You can also go to any trusted man of God around you. No matter what you’ve done in the past or whoever offended you, pour it out, let it go and save your peace. As you read this piece, don’t put it down until you have made up your mind to open up and let go. You can avoid further pains from today but you need to open up and let go on your painful pasts.
Segun Coker
info@schoolofvirtue.org
