Often, I think about the past. I think about yesterday or the weekend. About all the times I messed up, about everything that didn’t happen as I planned.
I’m reading The Return of the King, and in one chapter, Tolkien writes, “…all the paths behind were thronged by an unseen host that followed in the dark.” He’s writing about a literal unseen host, but this sentence somehow describes the fears and shame and guilt that haunt my trail daily.
Today (I’m not exactly sure why), I read several of the most personal pieces I wrote over the last year. One is an essay about my struggle with OCD. Another is a poem about one of the hardest days of my life. Both made me look behind and ahead simultaneously: why did these things happen the way they did, and what will the future look like because of them?
I don’t like change. But these last two years have been full of change. So much has fallen apart. I knew we lived in a broken world, but I was not prepared to see it break so suddenly and so surely—my personal world, and the world we all live in every day. If we were blinded before about our brokenness, I don’t see how we can continue to remain so.
I wish I could rewind time, take back all the mistakes—every word and action that shaped the path I walk today. I would like to have zero unseen hosts tracking me down it.
That’s not something we get to do, though. We don’t get to go back.
So then I think, I’ll look toward the future. When I focus on that, though, and see what’s happening now and what possibilities there are for that vague thing called tomorrow, I am afraid. How will I ever get there?
In another chapter of The Return of the King, Tolkien writes:
[Pippin] looked at the great walls, and the towers and brave banners, and the sun in the high sky, and then at the gathering gloom in the East; and he thought of the long fingers of that Shadow: of the orcs in the woods and the mountains, the treason of Isengard, the birds of evil eye, and the Black Riders even in the lanes of the Shire—and of the winged terror, the Nazgûl. He shuddered, and hope seemed to wither.
The future often makes it seem as if hope has withered. We stare at looming waves of what might be coming and what is coming and we shudder. Anxiety entangles itself with every thought of the future until we are paralyzed by what if? and why can’t it just be the way it was? and well, you can’t have that future, look at your ugly past.
And here is where I feel stuck.
I don’t know. I don’t know how often we should look behind to process and let go and how often we should turn away from what’s behind and focus only on what’s ahead.
I don’t know how every detail will come together.
The past makes me long for a now where everything is made right. The broken state of now makes me long for the return of the real King and the perfect future only He brings.
Here I am reminded that every story, to be a story, must have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
We are between the middle and the end.
We are waiting.
We have not arrived yet.
We can’t change the past. I wish we could. I would like to erase every mistake and smooth every bump. The unseen host following me in the dark is a host I would like to be rid of. That’s a daily struggle for me.
And I can’t only focus on all the possibilities of a future that may or may not ever happen. That’s a breeding ground for anxiety.
So somehow, I must be present. To not allow the mistakes of the past to haunt me, but to learn from them, to find a way to move forward. To hold the future loosely as I walk toward it.
One thing I know for sure: I’m not in charge of this. I don’t have to perfectly solve the mistakes I can’t ever change or create a perfect future my poor abilities would never realize.
And that fills me often with hope.
C.S. Lewis writes in Prince Caspian,
“To know what would have happened, child?” said Aslan. “No. Nobody is ever told that.”
“Oh dear,” said Lucy.
“But anyone can find out what will happen,” said Aslan. “If you go back to the others now, and wake them up; and tell them you have seen me again; and that you must all get up at once and follow me—what will happen? There is only one way of finding out.”
What an amazing progression of thoughts Morgan! Past, Present, Future. I imagine you having discussions in heaven with these authors and actually enjoying every moment. But maybe you are enjoying the process now! Mind blowing!