Step Over

Had a really lovely morning at the annual Anglican Church Retreat, the lady who was leading the retreat gave us this quote to use in one of the quiet moments we had during the day. It's by Henri Nouwen.

"Sometimes we have to "step over" our anger, our jealousy, or our feelings of rejection and move on. The temptation is to get stuck in our negative emotions, poking around in them as if we belong there. Then we become the "offended one", the "forgotten one", or the "discarded one". Yes, we can get attached to these negative identities and even take morbid pleasure in them. It might be good to have a look at these dark feelings and explore where they come from, but there comes a moment to step over them, leave them behind and travel on."

Someone once said to me that "God is more interested in who we are becoming than who we have been" I agree with that.

In many ways it has also led me to agree that a lot of counseling is past focussed and negative when God is future focussed and positive. Of course people argue that you sometimes can't move into your future until you have dealt with your past, they spend forever dealing with the past in some form of counseling limbo waiting until it is dealt with before they move on. We can only truly get the desire to move on when we look to what we can become and what we are being held back from. This means future focus.