What God has done for me lately?
As a child, and growing up, I heard a buzz phrase all the time on the TV, in the paper and on the Radio that “you could never go back” and it affected me deeply. I believed that this meant that no matter how much you try when something was over you could never have it again, but recently with God I have found this not to be true.
God gives great opportunities to live and grow in faith but every once in a while I have been given an extraordinary chance to go back into my own childhood and see it with fresh eyes. Sometimes I am amazed and other times I am dismayed when things are either exactly as I remember them or completely different. I would like to give you three examples of what I mean.
Just under a year ago there was a ceremony in the United Mission Church of St Andrew, Kirton in Lindsey where the new Scout troop flag was dedicated to God, but the amazing thing wasn’t the flag but the people. I used be a Scout in that troop and I happened to be in church that Sunday, but I was amazed at who else was there. To me the Scout Movement is a family and I was a part of that family for the majority of my childhood. At this service I was seeing people who I remember with great fondness and I was accepted as one of the old gang, we even had our photo taken with the new flag. That is when it struck me that I had figuratively managed to turn back the hands of time, because in that service it was like it was 1999 again. I felt uplifted, revived and healed by the experience which gave me the chance to lay some of my childhood issues to rest.
For my 23rd birthday I decided to repeat the school holiday trips I took as I child, but instead of staying at Bamburgh I stayed in Berwick on Tweed. This time I visited some of the same places as before, but it wasn’t the same and not entirely what I had envisioned for the trip. The problem was that there were just too many differences. I was older and not with the same people, or staying in the same place etc. I was looking for that childhood wonderment I had first experienced when I had gone before. I remembered going to Bamburgh Castle and seeing a hallway, walking down it with the ghost of a girl, she held your hand as her other hand brushed against the tapestry on the wall. Obviously this was a trick, but when I went back the whole thing was gone. I couldn’t find the hallway let alone the tapestry. Also through my jaded eyes all I saw was the same things I see from any other historic landmark; however I understood them better and could appreciate the buildings’ beauty more than when I was a child. The trip wasn’t wasted, I thoroughly enjoyed everything we did that week, but it just wasn’t what I was looking for when I planned it.
Now, as I am writing, I am in a hotel room in Durham, another city I visited on a school trip when I was a lot younger. This time I didn’t come seeking the past and childhood wonderment, but came so I could find out about how I could change the future, that however is another story. While I wasn’t seeking the past, walking down the same streets made me remember it and instead of being filled with childhood wonderment I was filled with a sense of mild amusement about the events of the past and how some things lurk in your memory just waiting to be prompted by seeing them again. I wonder if it is possible “to go back”. The voice inside me says no, but God gives the opportunity to go forward and along the way revisit some of the places and people that hold a special place in your heart.
