Because of your history…

Here’s a little inside info on me: I am a cancer survivor of over five years. I was diagnosed at 23 years of age, when Jason and I had just celebrated six whole months of marriage. I spent the latter six months of our first year of marital bliss receiving chemotherapy treatments. To God’s glory, I now celebrate over five years of being cancer-free.

The logical mind would surmise that the further away I get from my experience with cancer, the easier it becomes to breathe,  to not fear about this traumatizing experience. Except that the opposite has proven to be true in my life. It seems like with each victorious year that passed, part of me gets just a little bit more tense over the fear of cancer. Want to know something that totally doesn’t help calm those fears? The constant reminder of my past with cancer by any and everyone in the medical community.

It is not abnormal at all for me to find myself at a doctor’s office with what may literally be as harmless as a cold, and to suddenly find myself assaulted by multiple tests that are being done “just to be safe.” Or I’d hear this line, “For anyone else we’d just let this go, but because of your history…“

We all have a history. Some things in them are so good that we relive them over and over in our minds, desperate to recapture even a fraction of the joy that moment brought to us. Some things are so dark, though, that we relive them over and over in our minds, desperate to forget, and yet seemingly paralyzed from escaping their hold over us.

Here’s the good news: none of us have to let us history define us or control us. One day when I was telling someone about the little mantra that followed me from doctor’s office to doctor’s office, I accidentally said, “Because of His history.” That got me thinking. The only history that really matters here is Christ’s. His history includes dying on a cross for me so that I could have freedom today. His history includes paving the way for my future. I decided from that point on that every time someone mentioned my “history,” I’d focus on HIStory instead.

If your past keeps bringing you down and holding you back, remember – His history has made it possible for you to move on into a future filled with His promise. Embrace that. Let HIStory be what defines you from this point on.