Romancing the Past

Life is interesting. I've been a little distracted this month with being sick, going to camp almost every weekend, and getting ready for my intern. Now that I'm kind of back in focus, my schedule shifts even more as I'm going home next week. Sigh.

One thing I do want to share is something I learned last night in my Beth Moore Bible study. We were discussing the Israelites and their reaction to wandering in the desert. At one point, they start talking about how they wish they were back in Egypt where they got to eat meat! Oh, how glorious it was! So much better than manna!

Beth Moore's point was that we often romanticize the past when our current situation is rough. We often pull out the old pictures, read our old journals, and take a trip down memory lane in effort to think how great of a time it was.

Visiting camp has been a great distraction this month. Last weekend, I brought my scrapbook so that Jason could look at it. I loved going through it and remembering how amazing those summers were - the Lord working through me, the crazy adventures and nights of thunderstorms. I visited with the summer staff, secretly wishing I could have summers off so I could just even be at camp. But I never though about the mornings I woke up and didn't want to be there, or the storms that gave me hypothermia and made me really scared, or the times I really didn't like Jason for the task that he gave me. At least I never though about it until last night when Beth Moore was talking about romancing the past. Then it clicked. I was using camp to live in the past because I didn't really like my present.

I was bitter.

I keep wanting my trials to be over, to get some respite, to breathe. But I can't do that. I need to focus on today and only today. Yes, it may suck, but it's what I've been given. And what the Lord has given me is for my good, will result in His glory, and it exactly what I need.

I just need to believe it.