Have you ever had something bad happen to you that no matter how hard you tried, you just couldn’t get over it? Did thoughts of the emotional pain and agony it caused you flood your mind constantly? Well that’s exactly what happened to me several months ago. I was trying to move forward in my relationship with my husband, and leave everything that caused heartache and destruction in my marriage in the past. I remember saying to God, “Lord will I ever get over this? Will there ever be a day that I can wake up and think about something other than my husband’s love affair?” I was told by a counselor that when something tragic happens in your life, it can take at least 12 months to heal. Well I told myself, “I don’t want to wait that long! That seems like eternity!” Part of me wished I could hit my head and have short term memory loss, but through God and with time, I learned to look to the future and no longer let the past ruin my happiness today.

Sometimes getting over your past isn’t always about what happened to you, it can also be about something you did that you regret. For weeks I had a hard time forgiving myself for not being a good wife. I had been in church for years, attended marriage classes, marriage retreats, and learned how to be a Proverbs 31 woman, yet I didn’t apply it to my own life. I regret some of the choices I made, the weekends I spent at pageants instead of with my husband, and the nights I put my daughter in the bed with me just so my husband wouldn’t try to have sex with me. Oh I wish I could turn back the hands of time and show my husband love, respect, affection, and appreciation, but one thing I learned about the past is you can’t change it, so why do we keep our minds so fixated on something that can never be undone?

In my heart I knew that I could never reverse all the damage that had occurred between Richie and I, all the words we exchanged to pierce through one another’s hearts, but what I could do was decide to start being a wife that was pleasing to him and to the Lord from that day forward. That’s one of the greatest decisions I ever made in my life, and also one of the most rewarding. Isaiah 43:18-19 says, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See I am doing a new thing!”  God was doing a new thing in our lives but the devil was constantly putting thoughts of the past in my mind. I wondered things like how long was Richie going to talk to another woman before telling me, and did he promise her he would leave me so that they could be together? I had to come up with a strategy to stop dwelling on those things, so I decided that every time something bad came to my mind I was going to cast that thought down and replace it with a good thought of me and my husband. I wanted to be more focused on the restoration God was doing in our lives instead of the schemes of the devil. I spoke out loud to Satan several times demanding him to leave me alone. Some days I had to do that often, but I was not going to let him steal my joy, for the joy of the Lord is my strength.

I made a commitment to myself one day that I would never contact the other woman again and that I would never search for her on any social media site. I realized how every time I did those things I was making it harder on myself. I was determined not to waste one more second of my life thinking about a woman that was nothing more than somebody that my husband used to know.

When the Israelites were in the wilderness they constantly griped and complained stating that they would have been better off remaining as slaves in Egypt. (Exodus 16:2-3) God had great plans for them in the promise land, but they were unwilling to move forward and they robbed themselves of a blessing. I knew that God had a plan to make my marriage better than ever before, so instead of living in self pity wishing my husband never cheated, I spent my time in prayer thanking God for all He was doing and how he was turning my situation around. I became focused on making wonderful memories with my husband and letting go of all the hurtful ones.

 3:13 …But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead

If there’s anything in your past that has brought you pain, suffering, or regret, I pray today that you let it go! Give it to God and don’t look back! If your husband has said things or done things that hurt you then choose to forgive him and move on. Forgiveness means to cease to bear resentment against; to stop feeling angry or hurt by someone. Colossians 3:13 says, “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”

I once received an email from Mort Fertel the author and founder of the Marriage Fitness System. It told me to get a glass of water and hold it up. At first the glass of water didn’t seem heavy but the longer I held on to it, the heavier it felt. The weight of the glass of water didn’t change, but if I would have held on to it for hours eventually it would have felt like a ton of bricks.  Mort Fertel says That’s exactly how marriage is. If we allow things that happen between us and our spouse to weigh heavy on our hearts, then the longer we hold it in, the heavier the burden becomes.

I pray that you choose today to allow God to help you get past the past. You may never completely forget what’s happened, but you can live a life of joy and peace if you follow God’s plan for your life.

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