What God Can't Do

by Florence Young

The tape keeps playing in your head. Over and over again you hear the words, relive the happenings. They never change, not even after you've heard them for the zillionth time.

They burn a little deeper every time. So why do you keep playing the tape in your head? Why do you keep remembering those awful, ugly words that led you closer and closer to the end of a relationship you believed would last unto death?

The words will not change, not if you played them again and again in your memory every hour of every day. They won't change because they've been said and can't be unsaid. The memories won't change because the happenings that created the memories have happened and can't be undone.

You can't change what was said. You can't change what happened. Neither can God.

Turn off the tape. Stop playing the words and the memories. They are keeping you from moving out of your past into the rest of your life. As long as you live in those memories you are sentenced to live by those ugly words and terrible times.

Get rid of them. Write them down in the ugliest ink you can find, then burn them. Scream them into the wind while you throw them away with the rocks you hurl at any handy target out of harm's way. Tell them out loud in a recovery group. But get rid of them! Above all, do not bury them deep within yourself, pretending to feel no pain, where they will fester and eventually do great harm.

Whatever method you use, make the throw-away permanent. Tell God you can't live like this any more and you need His help to keep the tape turned off. Tell Him every morning and at noon and at night. As often as you hear that click in your head signaling the beginning of another bitter memory, tell God you need deliverance.

You can't change the past. God can't, either. But with His help you can leave it behind and move into your future.

copyright 2000 by Florence Young -- all rights reserved

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