Life is so simple when you are a child.
I remember when my three year old son thought his four year old brother knew everything in the world-after all, his brother was a year older and more experienced.
"Adam and Eve were the first people," my four year old said. "And then Jesus was born, and then you and I were born."
"Was anyone born between when Jesus was born and when we were born?" my three year old asked his brother.
My four year old thought about it a second and then said, "Nobody important."
I had to laugh. Life is simple when you are three or four years old. Billions of people are born worldwide every year-but to two small boys, there was "Nobody important," because their world only had room for their family.
When my three-year-old asked his brother why we had colored eggs at Easter, his brother explained that on Easter morning Joseph asked Mary to cook him breakfast, and when she broke open an egg, out popped Jesus.
One of our family traditions was to write a list of New Year's Resolutions. They might be small things, like learning to play the guitar or working out to become stronger, getting better grades in school, small things. We'd put our resolutions into the box with the Christmas decorations and they'd stay there a year. The following year when we unpacked the decorations, we'd read the lists of resolutions and see how well or how badly we'd done.
When I asked my eight year old daughter, Spring Storm, for her list of resolutions, she said, "I don't need to make any resolutions, there is nothing wrong with me."
How wonderful to be "OK" with who you are!
Someone once told me that raising children was like growing a flower garden, you want to help the flowers bloom without bruising the petals.
I realized what I said to my children wasn't always what they "heard." They had their own minds, personalities and memories that would interpret my words into ideas they could understand. Even now, after they are grown and gone, they will share a memory with me that is vivid to them, but that I don't remember at all or I remember it very differently. I keep my mouth shut. Those are their memories, not mine.
It's like when I'd poured out my heart to a friend. I'd been hurt by someone who had lied about me and I wanted to "fix" it.
My friend asked me, "Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?"
"I want to be happy . . . " I said. "But. . . . "
"Let it go. Some things can never be fixed. Sometimes people love us and sometimes they hate us; nothing we do can change that. Let it go and move on," she said.
"But . . . " I didn't want to give up yet.
My friend laughed. "No, no 'buts.' Let it go!"
She was right. The Bible says, "Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before" (Philippians 3:14). Easy to say; hard to do.
One time when I'd been terribly hurt by a person I thought was my friend, I poured out my heart to my minister. He asked me how many times I'd relived the hurt and I said, "dozens."
He said, "What if there was a knock on your door, and you opened the door-and a man stabbed you in the heart and ran away. The next day there is a knock on your door, and you open the door, and the same man is there and stabs you in the heart and runs away. The first time it happened, it wasn't your fault, but the second time-and every time after that-it was your fault because you opened the door. Stop opening the door!"
I try to remember that. Sometimes I forget, and I open the door . . . to get stabbed in the heart . . . and I hurt . . . again.
We need to be careful which doors we open and which doors should stay closed and locked.
Stop letting unhappy memories into your life, lock the door. Don't look back.
If you've ever panned for gold, you know that you swirl the water around in the pan, washing off the sand and gravel. The gold, which is heavier, will stay in the bottom of the pan. If you're lucky, you'll find some gold nuggets while the sand and rocks are washed away.
We need to do that with our memories-wash away the sad, bad memories and only keep the gold, the best part, the part that makes us happy.
Crying Wind is the author of Crying Wind, My Searching Heart, When the Stars Danced, Thunder in Our Hearts, Lightning in Our Veins, and Stars in the Desert. See https://www.indianlife.org/store/ to order.
