dailydatewithgod

As a school kid, one of my favorite times of year was the beginning of a new school year.  I loved getting the new textbooks which had never been used and the blank notebooks just waiting to be filled with all kinds of information.  Plus who doesn’t love new pens, binders, and unmarked calendars?  Okay, so I was/am a bit of a nerd.  There was something about having a completely new slate from which to work that excited me.  Of course, the newness wears off rather quickly and the books become worn and used.  In college, to save money I bought used textbooks and pulled notebooks from the previous semester that still had blank pages.  Yet, even those I appreciated a great deal.  As a curios student of history I wondered where the books had been before and how what I learned the previous semester might apply to the current one.  I saw value in the new and the used.  The perfectionist in me wants it all to be a fresh new start but the realism in me knows that nothing comes from nothing and there is value in the history and knowing how far we have come.  I have learned that one does not negate the other because the option to start new is always present.  Newness from a deeper place of understanding helps create a potentially more meaningful experience.  I learned in recovery that once we make amends for our past actions where we have harmed ourselves or others, we do not shut the door on the past.  We use what happened and what we learned from it to change our way of operating going forth.  If I forget about it or do not look upon it to learn from it,  I am more likely to repeat it.  God has taught me whether an experience is new or used, it is about using it to grow in love.  Everything used was new at some point. The used version just has some battle scars.  Those scars are new to anyone who has not encountered them before and hold value.  Using our lives to be the creators and messengers of love in all areas, new and used, is living out from our hearts what we are designed to do.