Wise Words

 

“The thing I like about time is that it isn’t real. It exists only in your head. There’s no such thing as the past, it exists only in the memory. There’s no such thing as the future, it exists only in our imagination. If our watches were truly accurate the only thing they would ever say is now.” -Damien Echols

 

This quote may seem morbid if you’re aware of who it’s spoken by and his story. But if you’re a true True Crime fan like me, you also know that not everything is as it seems. Was he really guilty? Millions would say yes and more millions would say no. 

 

However, guilty or innocent, he makes a valid point. There is no past, it’s already been lived and now exists only as a memory. Even those memory have room for error and individual adaptation. The future has not happened yet and is but an idea or expectation that we have for ourselves. Will it happen? Will it not? Will we even exist in the future we set for ourselves? It’s impossible to know. There is only one moment in “time” that matters and that time is now. 

 

So many moments today resonated with me. I want to unravel these moments, break them apart, and digest them. The idea of time is one of them. The past and the future do not exist and therefore do not matter. Another was the words the pastor spoke in church. 

 

He addressed the question, “why.” So many times in my life have I asked this question. Ranging from small whys like “why is my schedule different this week” or big why’s like “why do I deserve this?” Why… such a broad word. The pastor said why is a sin. Which lead my brain down such a twisted road of exploration.

 

Immediately when he said this I started to contemplate what he meant when he said why is a sin. My first thought was myself as a parent. When our kids constantly ask us why sometimes we respond with “because I said so.” Because I, the parent, know the reason but it is sometimes unimportant for the child to know the reason. I know why and what’s best thus I expect my child to follow me blindly. It’s really no different with God. The “why” is unimportant. 

 

I then thought perhaps that’s why I’ve struggled so long with anxiety. The whys that encompass my thoughts on a very regular basis sometimes consume me. “Why” is really a negative question if you think of it. It only leads to more questions or unnecessary explanations. They aren’t needed. 

 

There’s no need to know why this or that happens because in the end even having an answer to “why” will not change what IS happening. If that makes sense. An explanation can sometimes only clutter the mind and lead to “what if’s” which are my dreaded enemies. 

 

I don’t want to constantly waste my time and energy on the “whys” and “what if’s” and time I have and have not yet spent. There’s only now, right now, this moment, this experience standing directly in front of me. 

 

We as a whole are constantly needing to know everything, myself included, and I can tell you from personal experience that whenever something disrupted my known (plans) it would cause me great stress/anxiety. 

 

In all honesty, that right there is probably the biggest cause for stress in my life. So having cancer of zero knowns, makes a lot of sense to me. It’s a lesson I needed to learn. This is what an up and coming pastor who spoke today talked about. How God “disciplines” his children because he cares. Just as we as parents punish our children because we care. How the trials put in our lives is a way of God telling us to learn what he needs us to learn through discipline. 

 

Perhaps that’s what is happening to me. I couldn’t let go of the desperate NEED to know everything so I was given the task of the completely unknown to learn to trust. That also leads to a lot of other factors in my life. Trusting. I have had trust broken so many times in my life in so many different ways and in different types of relationships that I’ve held so much distrust for nearly everyone in my life. Though at this stage of my life the people who are here, in my life, have more than proved they’re trustworthy. Yet, I still did not fully trust. 

 

I feel that all these things are connected, intertwined in a great scheme that even I cannot comprehend fully at this moment. I feel lucky today to have taken notice of these things. Most people lose sight daily of the bigger things at play or perhaps they just ignore them? I hope I don’t lose sight of the lessons I feel I’m being taught. I know it is helping me grow and break apart the trauma from my life to create in me a better, stronger heart and soul.