Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.

Each day has enough trouble of its own. 

Matthew 6:34

I had a dream the other night.  In this dream I was going somewhere and it seemed to be a long way away.  I was tired and had been walking a long time and for whatever reason, I was carrying a heavy backpack. Seemed heavy enough to be filled with rocks but I don’t know what was in it because I never stopped to look.  In the dream, I felt a sense of urgency.  Stopping to look in the backpack would only slow me down.  So I never looked.  I just kept on trudging along.

A little further on in this dream, I was still walking, still in a hurry, only this time I had on my back a blue kid’s wading pool. We have one like that in our backyard.  It is a carry over from when we bred dogs.  The pool was the nursery for the pups and their mother.  I kept it because I might someday breed my dog again.  It sits in the backyard and is pretty useless other than for puppies because it is cracked and won’t even hold water.  I have no desire to breed dogs again, but there it sits.

In the dream, I am worn out and exhausted and pushing to get somewhere with this awkward pool on my back.  After what seems like a very long time of this, I wake up.

I am no expert on dreams but this is my take on that dream.  I think the backpack represents my past and is full of things I carry along with me – baggage I would be better off without – regrets, hurts, wounds, broken relationships, missed opportunities, etc. We all have that and it is hard to stop and take a look at what is there and let it go.  Painful even.  But in my dream it was obvious that my progress to whatever destination I was headed was drastically impeded by the weight of objects in that backpack.

I can’t change the past.  I can forgive others and myself and I can let go.  I can quit beating myself up over past mistakes; I can release others from their past mistakes as well. I can lighten that load and move on but only by God’s grace.  I can’t do that on my own; I know, I have tried.  So once again I lay my backpack at the foot of the cross and ask for the grace to leave it there.

What I can do, however, is learn to rest in the provision of God and take my concerns about the future to Him. Day by day,  hour by hour or even minute by minute if need be.

I can trust in His word that tells me my future is in His hands.  I don’t know the date my healing will manifest, only that it will, until then I have this moment.  I can be here now or I can give away this moment by reliving the past or fretting about the future, neither of which I can change.