Free of the Past

Today is Monday, June 29th. Two days ago I wrote a letter to Mae – quite a long one. I will place it here because it holds a key in it that came there-after and for whatever reason I need to know that these words were said. I’ve never been heard on some things. I’ve carried a great deal of wonder and confusion about the journey of this lifetime and what I thought would happen after tragedy and loss. I guess I could call it goals but more-so a hope for a type of redemption that would overcome past hurt. I guess that could be called vengeance. Or at the least a desire to be vindicated. But vindicated from what? What even should I call events that happened – what exactly are memories?

Well, they are dead things being given false life. They aren’t real. These moments, conversations, transitions and events that caused me pain or joy or anything at all – they have disappeared like vapor. I can not go visit them and fix them or change them now. The only thing that could be considered real by the illusion of my mind is that they create feelings in me that impact my today. But that is something that simply doesn’t have to be.

Years ago I experienced what some cultures call a Kundalini awakening. Everything in my body became extremely intense; both good feelings and what we call bad feelings. It was frightening because I didn’t know what was happening. Western religions don’t teach about these things, our doctors don’t understand anything about it and I felt like I was going mad. Yet the physical feeling I would have when I allowed myself to be still and just breathe was the most blissful state of being I’ve ever experienced. It’s not an emotion and that makes it hard to describe even to myself. There are feelings of bliss that we experience in love or in accomplishments met. We can feel bliss in happenings that cause us to be excited or hopeful. This isn’t like that at all. This is a blissful state that simultaneously arrives without reason. In the stillness. In the nothing. In the state of all thoughts emptied out it appears and radiates in a circular motion throughout my being like a type of vortex surrounding me.

I didn’t know how to frame that up in my mind. What did it mean? Where was it coming from? Was it a gift from God, (a baptism of the Holy Spirit)? It did feel like fire in a good way. Or was it something evil? I asked questions and even shared my experience with a few friends who claimed to be spiritual – both preachers of the Bible and followers of Jesus. One told me she thought it was evil and I should repent. The other told me it was a gift from God and then suggested that I had been sent into his path because he was to train me and be my leader. Both answers created more confusion and ultimately fear and dread.

Many years have passed since then and I have fought what happened to me as I struggled day and night to get back to a sense of normalcy. The more I clinged onto the life I knew and the person I believed myself to be from the past the more I suffered and relived painful memories.

In the gospels it’s said that Christ refines by fire. I’ve encountered Christ several times between the years of 2016 and 2024. In several of the dreams and visions he appeared with the element of fire. In the last dream I was given in Miami during 2024 he approached me holding a Bible. He held it up to me open and I could read on the pages to the left side it said Old Testament and on the right side it said New Testament. He lifted his right hand and kindled a ball of fire inside of it and then casted the fire onto the left side of that book, setting the Old Testament ablaze into a heap of ash. Then he looked at me lovingly and asked me, “Do you understand?”

I later that day reflected upon a scripture that I remembered from the book of Hebrews. In Hebrews 8 the writer talks about the old and the new covenants. Specifically it says,..

⁶ But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises.

⁷ For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second.

The entire chapter speaks of the old ways and the old promises passing away. The ways of our forefathers and the laws of moses failing to accomplish anything and therefore there’s this new thing that God has done.

Ironically, in the background I kept hearing another scripture that seemed to be speaking to me in a quiet inner whisper all day as I went about my dealings. “I will do a new thing.”… I looked up these words in Google and found them in a scripture from the book of Isaiah 43:18:

¹⁸ Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old.

¹⁹ Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.

In the days and months and even now as I write this in 2026 I see a cycle of these messages unpacking to me spiritually that has become louder and louder, demanding I take notice of what the Holy Spirit wants me to hear and embrace fully. Remembering the old things isn’t an option here. It’s a command that is necessary that I forget the past. “Remember not the former things,” the scripture says. And what happens if I don’t listen? I was given a scripture for that too. 2 Corinthians 3:14 says:

14 But their minds were closed. For to this day the same veil remains at the reading of the old covenant. It has not been lifted, because only in Christ can it be removed. 15 And even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. 16 But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.…

It seems these messages have come to me in parts. I will receive one and be given much time to think about and quite frankly if I’m being honest the result is a war within to try to ignore it. I don’t understand or perhaps don’t want to understand because to be completely free from the past in a sense makes me free from having purpose. What war must I fight and win or what army am I to aim to conquer if there is nothing of the past that needs tending to? If I am to look never again at the days behind me with a desire to right the wrongs done to me or the failures I perceive when I look at myself than what reason do I have to live this life at all?

In a moment of breakdown yesterday I was caught without warning in a tsunami of tears. I’d spent hours with a young man who had overcome an injury that ripped away his dream of playing in the NBA. In the very season that he had made a decision to enter the NBA draft, he incurred a career ending injury. It was the first quarter of his very first game in the league. He reminded me as he told me his story that everything can change in a single moment – a blink of an eye. We can spend our entire lives chasing a goal from the moment we wake up until we go to bed at night for years upon years and then a strike of bad luck can take that dream away in an instant. This happens to so many of us in this life. I know it’s certainly happened to me many times. I’ve lost much.

But what did he do with that? He fought to keep going. He fought to get up and to overcome the circumstances and prove everyone wrong who had spoken over him, “You will never play ball again. You injury is too final.” It’s inspiring and yet it didn’t touch me the way it out to. I listened to him speak as if I was summoning my own heart, mind and emotions to feel uplifted and motivated. I did not truly feel that way however – not on the inside. So I wondered what is wrong with me? Why am I not uplifted? Am I dead inside? Do I not believe in good stories anymore? In deeper layers of this thought I compared myself to him. The man’s first word was “ball” and he said he knew by the age of 3 that he wanted to be a basketball player when he grew up. I laughed as he shared with me the stories of him playing make believe in his bedroom with a full court of opponents that existed only in his head. He had full games that he played inside of his imagination on a regular basis.

As he spoke I began to remember my earliest days here on Earth in my imagination. I asked myself silently, “What did I want to be when I grew up?” And the answer wasn’t far from me. Just that morning I had changed my main photo on Instagram to a Halloween shot from 2020 where I dressed up as Rainbow Brite. I thought I did this in honor of my Granny Mae. She had knitted with her hands beautiful costumes for me when I was a little girl that gave me the ability to bring my fantasy world to life. I put on those costumes and I became Rainbow Brite. She even made me a magic wand with a giant gold star on the tip of it. I cherished it so much. When I held it in my little hands I believed that I could cast fairy dust from it and create miracles. My childhood desire was to be like her – a bright light in this world. I wanted to take away all of the world’s sadness and anger. I wanted to sprinkle light over arguments and turn them to friendship; turn hatred into love and turn pain into joy.

The conversations inside of my head became deeper and more disturbing as I graded myself along my journey thus far. I thought about all of the things I was told about myself in growing up. My mother often told me how my appearance had snatched away her dreams; forcing her to quit school and give up the path she’d hoped for herself in order to slave over jobs and settle for bad relationships just to gift me a home and a father figure. I thought about how I’d carried the blame of my little sister being born premature with a list of health problems. The doctors told my mother that Placenta Previa was caused by stress and I was the one who had stressed my mother out to the kilt with my teenager problems I brought into our home. I thought about my ex-husband’s accident and the 3 days I spent taking him to different hospitals and the words of Dr. Dannonbaum, the nuerosurgeon downtown how later said, “I’m sorry we didn’t get him a little sooner. This didn’t have to happen.” I was the reason that he didn’t go downtown sooner. I was the one in charge who rushed him from urgent cares to level 3 Trauma centers in our hometown. I didn’t know that he needed to go downtown and be seen by a nueroscientist. I didn’t know that a single moment was about to change everything just as it had done to Damion on the basketball court.

And what of it all now as 7 years have come and gone? I couldn’t save him. And in my failure to know what to do to save him I hurt myself because I lost the one thing I thought would never leave; love. And I watched my children fall apart thereafter too. All the things I cared about most were snatched away and I was the only one who could’ve made a different decision on March 24th, 2016. I didn’t know what I know now. I’d never even heard of a stroke. I wish the countless doctors who saw him on March 22nd, March 23rd and March 24th had told me – I wish they’d known to tell me. Why did everyone miss this? And what kind of Rainbow Brite did I grow up to be when my own intuition in the realm of love failed me so completely?

The young basketball player told me how powerful his faith was through the storm he endured. He talked about how his mother had supported him and reminded him that he could do anything with God with him. He told me the pain he felt waking up each day unable to walk and forcing himself anyway to go to the court and at least dribble a ball. He told me about his journey back up from the valley into a new world where he today plays pro basketball all over the globe. So far he’s played in 10 countries and had experiences that he never dreamed could be possible. “God is good,” he said with a bright smile full of light.

Damion isn’t the first person to cross my path with a story of detours that seemingly were divine in nature. I met a paraplegic years ago who was in a tragic accident that took away his ability to do anything with his body from the waste down. Today he’s called among the “Top 10 Inspirational Speakers” by Wall Street Journal. He’s a multi-millionaire with non profits and corporate partnerships and he’s touched more people than I can phathom with his story that God seemingly gave him. He says in a speech I watched on Youtube standing before thousands of people in a sold out stadium, “If I could go back and change what happened to me I wouldn’t do it. If I could choose to not be in this wheelchair and escape the accident then I’d not be walking in my purpose today.”

It’s profound. These men spent their entire lives up to their 20’s with a dream of what their future could be and they worked so hard towards that goal. Then one single moment changed everything and they were left to pick up the pieces and figure out how to move forward. They did. They testify today that the new life is better than the old – that the plans God had for them is much brighter and full-filling than the plans that they had made for themselves.

Am I overcomplicating the path that I don’t understand? I want so badly to wake up and have conviction inside of me that my pain has purpose and that God is still authoring every single step I take with a rainbow at the end of this long dark tunnel.

In the book of Galatians 4, it says that we can’t see the promise of the new gift if we keep reading the promises of the past. Specifically, I want to drop the entire explanation in scripture here:

²¹ Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?

²² For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman.

²³ But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise.

²⁴ Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar.

²⁵ For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.

²⁶ But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.

²⁷ For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband.

²⁸ Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise.

²⁹ But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now.

³⁰ Nevertheless what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman.

³¹ So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.

When I read that I think about the promise of something better that entered in their day and what that might mean for me now. And I’m taken to a deeper level of truth within myself – a small voice that I’d silenced for as long as I can remember. And beneath this wish is perhaps the very core of why my childhood dreams were never attached to a real-life scenario opportunity. I didn’t want to be a doctor or a firefighter or a basketball player. I wanted to be Rainbow Brite. But why? Well, when you feel like your existence was a matter of “bad news” there’s a darkness that’s injected into the way you view yourself and your identity. I would imagine that I believed if I could become the girl who heals people then I wouldn’t have to carry the weight of being the girl who destroys anyone’s dreams. I wonder what that would feel like to walk into a room and experience eyes lit up with excitement at the very sign of my coming. To be loved and treasured like that.

Mae’s eyes did that when I walked into a room. She didn’t have to say a word, I felt it – her love. Later in life I experienced that again from my children. I remember the greatest part of my day was picking them up from daycare and seeing their little faces light up with joy and excitement when they spotted me coming. I got to experience it once more after my ex’s accident when we brought home a puppy my son named Drako. And still to this day I’m gifted these little moments of magic after being gone for months at a time. When I walk through my mother’s door he goes wild with so much excitement he can’t contain it. He runs and jumps and knocks things down in her home. His eyes gaze at me like I’m the object of all that matters to him. I know it may sound silly to some because he’s just a dog but as I type these words I’m ugly crying right now just visualizing these beautiful moments. It’s not about the vessel or whether its a person or an animal – it’s just about love. That feeling is so powerful when it’s directed at me and I don’t get to feel it often so I treasure it very much.

So I ask myself, is that the point? Is it all about love for me? And I believe the answer is yes. Somewhere deep inside I’m craving it in a different way than I’ve ever known before. I don’t want to be loved because it’s just the system of things by title or relationship as mothers are required to love their child or as a husband is locked into a vow that requires him to love his wife. I don’t want to be loved by way of performance where I’m valued only when I say the right words, wear the right clothing or accomplish the right things on a job. I want the real thing. I want a higher love in the way that Drako the dog makes me feel – unwavering and unchanging no matter how much time I spend away from him. Whether I’m singing and full of joy or ugly crying in a pool of my own tears he lays by me with his head on my leg in the same essence of complete awe and devotion.

If I’m being honest with myself I never felt that with my ex-husband. The years didn’t make our connection more powerful it just made it more the norm. I’ve never felt that from anyone in my family either other than my Granny Mae. And when I look at my beloved children who once gazed at me with admiration as if I hung the moon, I know that I don’t complete the spaces in their hearts that I once did. My daughter is ready for a love that takes her higher – a man who can hold her whole heart and to start a new chapter and a family with someday. My son too is in desperate need of hope for a future that looks nothing like the heartbreak he carries from the past. Like me, he has a tendency to blame himself for the pain others endure and to stay stuck in situations that he can’t fix or change. Like me, he too had a childhood complex of superhero syndrome. I love that about him so much but I hope he finds a doorway to feeling loved just as he is without needing to conquer the world for acceptance. Like me, he needs to learn to accept what is and let go of the past. He needs to trust that God has a plan we can’t yet see and that something beautiful can come from the ashes if we only can keep the faith and keep getting up.

Well, I’ve been doing that for many, many years now. I’m waiting on that moment.

Damion said, “God can change everything in one single moment.” I know it’s true that a person’s entire world can be turned upside down in an instant. One wrong step, one wrong decision, one wrong word spoken – one second of time that can never be undone again. But if something I call bad can be so final and powerful to alter the course of all things that happen thereafter, well then it must also be true that something good can happen in one single moment to alter the course as well.

So today, I will try to live in today and today only. I’ve cried enough tears to fill the Atlantic ocean and I’m no better off for it. If there was anything meant to be with me today it would be here. The ones that have chosen to leave my life did so because they don’t belong anymore. So I desire to let it all go – once and for all. I desire to let them walk in whatever God lays upon their hearts and remove my grip from the outcomes that didn’t happen. I tried. I truly did try to my best for everyone who I’ve been gifted with in my walk thus far. I’ve tried to love them all and I need to be OK with failing at whatever didn’t work out despite my efforts.

Today I’m asking Christ to grant me that freedom from the past that only he can truly give. To be made a new creature in a new season where I can truly forget the former things as it says in Isaiah – to remember them no more. I mean, it seems the stage is set perfectly; I’m certainly in the wilderness and have been wandering inside of that dry land for a long time now. I guess if I were really trying to score a win with myself I’d count it all as joy right now and say to God…

“Thank you for removing everything and everyone that isn’t meant to be with me in this new season. Thank you for you all that you’ve given and all that you’ve taken away. Thank you for the closed doors, the broken hearted moments of goodbyes and the detours that derailed me from my dreams I had for myself. Thank you that I didn’t get what I wanted because you have something that will suit me better in the promise of your love.”

Maybe I don’t need a magic wand or a super hero cape to be the bearer of good news. Maybe all I need is this pen and a desire to speak the miracles that I witness in each moment of now. Maybe I had to be emptied out of everything that wasn’t aligned with God’s plan for me in order to be an empty cup that can now receive the good gifts from Heaven that the Father of Lights pours out upon those who ask. I ask for higher love God. I ask for joy, laughter, moments that set my heart on fire with gratitude and praise and I ask for an authentic voice that speaks of it all in truth.

What can you do with my story now? What gifts can come of this wreckage? What beauty can be painted from the ash?

I set my heart to receive today. Not to try or to fight or to labor to make anything work that simply isn’t meant to. I only want to be your child who receives from a loving father the goodness of your plans and the only work I want to do is to write here in this sacred space of all the wonderful moments you give.

P.S. Thank you for sending Drako to spend time with me this morning. His presence has been beautiful and very loving.