Rearview Mirror

I live in a place where it gets very hot in the summer.  So hot that one time the glue that held my rearview mirror on melted and the mirror fell off!  Not while driving, thankfully! I had to get it fixed right away or I wouldn't be able to back up, change lanes, etc. while driving.  It wouldn't be very safe.  I needed to be able to see what was behind me.

I've come to realize that I've spent an awful lot of my life "looking in my rearview mirror" and I'm not talking about the one in my car.  I'm talking about the one for my memories.  Sometimes I've focused so much on what has happened in the past that I miss what is happening right now.  It's so easy to do.  If someone said something or did something to hurt me, it was hard to get it out of mind.  Even after forgiving them, I would find myself thinking about it again and again. Sometimes there would be a stressful time in my life and I would think about it so much that it kept me from seeing the possibility of good things in my future.

I finally came to the place, a few years ago, where I realized that I was spending way too much time looking back and not enough time looking at now or looking toward the future.  I saw that I was focusing on "where I'd been" instead of "where I could go."  That was a life-changing realization for me.  By changing my view, I could change my outlook.  I needed to remember that God has good plans for me (Jeremiah 29:11).  If I'm always looking back, I'll never have hope for the future.

Sometimes, we need to say "good-bye" to things in our past that keep us from our future.  If we want to  move forward, we can't keep looking behind.  We would never be able to drive safely forward if we were only looking in our rearview mirrors, would we? It's ok to remember things from the past, it is part of our story, we just need to remember not to let it get in the way for our future.

I leave you with a song sung by Jo Dee Messina called, "Bye Bye."  The song talks about waiting too long on someone to make up their minds about a relationship and the person says "bye bye" and moves on.  I think you'll appreciate the rearview mirror reference.  When listening to the song, think about the things in your life you need to say "Bye Bye" to so you can move forward to the good things God has planned for you!