One-year anniversary of my wife’s homegoing to heaven 8/5/25-8/5/26.
T1: Release the past and move forward.
The Scripture for Truth 1: Philippians 3:13-14: I take Paul out of context and use this as a principle: Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. If we want to move forward toward the goal (perfection or completeness in Christ) then we need to forget what lies behind in the past.
“Forget the past and move forward” meant moving out of the house and neighborhood where I took care of Sandie for 3 years. I call it “moving out and moving on”. When she crashed our car into her doctor’s Porsche, I knew she couldn’t drive anymore. We moved from Memphis to Dallas to be close to our son. During those 3 years I took her to Rock Steady Boxing, church, doctors, neurologists, healing services, and hospice care. For the last year of her life she was in hospice care, lying in a hospital bed next to me. (The Lord forced to move out and on when the owner of the house decided to sell it.) Why was moving out important? It was separation from the past and a move forward into a new life. I needed to move out and move on into a new life without her.
“Forget the past” really means release it. At the hospice memorial service for all the patients who died in 2025, we released butterflies. My butterfly had difficulty flying when it was released. It fell; it did not fly up and away. After some help it fluttered away, free at last. Moving beyond loss and grief is like that.
Don’t hold on so tightly that you cannot move forward. Don’t let the past hold you back. I will never forget Sandie. I look at our pictures together and say, “I wish you were here with me, or I was there with you,” but feel only slight pain of loss and a whisper of grief. Then I give thanks she is safe in heaven. However, I am reducing photo albums. I keep only a few photos and three albums. I have pictures and videos on my phone I should delete so I can move forward. (I have a video of All Texas Cremation taking her body away. Delete it?) I have a VHS video of our wedding in 8/15/1987. I may digitize it, but I like the scratchy VHS quality because it looks old and reminds me we were married a long time ago before cell phones existed. I only watch it once a year on our anniversary.
“Forget the past” means I will not allow bitterness, resentment, fear, or unfulfilled dreams of growing old together keep me from experiencing the new life the Lord has for me. I’m still in this world. The Lord has a purpose for me. I will live it for His glory.
Hebrews 12:1-2: Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with patient endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
Cut loose the weight of the past and run with patient endurance the race Jesus has set before you. The “weight of the past” is any burden or impediment that would keep you from moving forward in the Lord’s plan: grief, guilt, anger, resentment, bitterness, unforgiveness, or any sinful attitude or behavior. I was bitter and angry toward God who controls life and death, who took my “soul mate” and crushed the dream of growing old together and having “mom” involved in the lives of our children. She was the key relational link with our children. She did not get to see her grandchild.
Cutting loose the weight of the past releases the freedom of the Spirit. 2 Corinthians 3:17: Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
Wilenghart’s Wisdom 