“Healing takes time…It takes remembering—sorting through the pieces of your past and savoring what was good, learning from what wasn’t. In that way you honor your yesterdays.” (Remember, Karen Kingsbury with Gary Smalley, page 92)

I read this today and it struck me as so true. Healing takes time and remembering. Often when we have been hurt we want to be healed “right now” and even when we have realized that it will take some time, we don’t want to deal with the remembering part.

In the remembering, however, we realize that even in the unpleasantness from the past, there were most likely some good things to savor, to enjoy, to remember with a smile… however faint.

At different times in my past I have had terrible “break-ups” in job relationships. Other times I experienced separation in relationships with friends and back when I was single, with girl friends. Sometimes the endings were so harsh that I didn’t want to think about them at all and when I did it was just to remember the bad stuff.

But I have discovered that as true healing comes with time, I have also begun to remember the good times in those situations. The good memories are worth remembering. After all, if there wouldn’t have been so much good I wouldn’t have been devastated by the endings.

And so I slowly let the positives come back even though that doesn’t mean I forget about the hurt of the negatives. But yesterday was real and it helped me get to where I am today. So I need the good and the bad to be part of my rememberings.

God understands that well. As we read the Bible, we find stories that show relationships at their best and at their worst. All worth remembering so that we might learn that in all things God is still working to heal us…to bring us to a place where even the worst situation can teach us something and help us to grow as we also remember what good things have happened among us and to us.