A Better Past?

Published on November 7, 2020

(Photo credit: Chess24)

Can you change the past?

Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? That’s what Jeremiah asked in Scripture (13:23)

Some things cannot be changed.

The most unchangeable is your past. You cannot undo it. 

It’s futile to reason, blame, or obsess over it. 

Perhaps your parent or your child or your spouse had disrespected or rejected you. Or, you made mistakes.

You cannot measure all that pain. Yet they stand as history. 

You forgive those who hurt you, you ask forgiveness for your failures and sins, as well as you forgive yourself, but they don’t remove all effects.

Noted psychotherapist Dr. Irvin Yalom, in his book “When Nietzsche Wept,” put it this way:

“The spirit of a man is constructed out of her choices ... sooner or later he had to give up hope for a better past.”

Jesus met a woman at the well with an unchangeable past: 5 marriages.

He did not ask that she erased her 5 marriages, for such is impossible and unrealistic.

JESUS simply offered her the Living Water to quench her obvious thirst:

Jesus said to her, 

“Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” (John 4: 13,14) 

www.drsubida.com


Category(s):Abuse / Abuse Survivor Issues, Adjusting to Change / Life Transitions, Adult psychological development

Written by:

Dr. Angelo Subida, Psychotherapist

Dr. Angelo Subida is a clinical psychotherapist, author, and speaker. He is author of books "Inner Healing," "Secrets Of Your Self," "Chess and Life," among others, blogs, and articles. He has appeared frequently as an expert on psychotherapy/life recovery issues on national television, radio broadcasts, print media, and webcasts, including GMA 7, TV 5, ABS CBN 2, Q-11, 700 Club, Radyo Veritas, Inquirer Radio, Smart Parenting Magazine, Business Mirror, among others, and has served as resident therapist/counselor for parents and kid-artists in the highly popular ABS-CBN 2 Voice Kids TV singing reality show. Dr. Subida is an eclectic, multidisciplinary therapist and originator of his own revolutionary high-tech, high-touch counseling plus model. His areas of specialization include parent-child therapy, clinical infidelity treatment, relationship/marital counseling, separation/divorce therapy, anger management, depression, addictions, psychotherapy-spirituality integration, and innovative chess therapy. For more of Dr. Subida, you can find him at www.drsubida.com.

Dr. Angelo Subida, Psychotherapist belongs to Dr. Angelo O. Subida Psychotherapy Clinic in Philippines