December 3: "Breaking Free of the Past"

MESSAGE

What is your earliest memory? Psychologists say that most people really have no memories of anything that happened to them before the age of 3. But I seem to clearly remember something from when I was probably 18 months old or so. I remember standing in my crib, chewing on the plastic teething rail on top of the side of the crib. It’s not a memory of something profound or life-changing. It was just another day in the life of a toddler.

Can you think of a memory of some event or experience that was sort of a defining moment for you? Something that affected your life from that moment on?

I have one memory from early childhood that I think is one of those defining moments – an event that shaped my self-image, my relationships with other people, and my attitudes for many years after it happened.

I had hearing loss all my life. My parents first noticed it when I was about three, and it was a very mild loss at the time, but it grew slowly but progressively worse as I got older. One day, when I was about 8 years old, I came home from school one day crying because the kids had been teasing me about my hearing loss.

I remember going to my mother, who was standing at the kitchen sink washing some dishes, and telling her about the nasty teasing. Her words still ring clearly in my mind: “I put up with it; so can you.”

That was it. No sympathy, no compassion, no offer to wipe away my tears or give me a hug.

You see, my mother had also had hearing loss since early childhood, but she went through life without ever receiving any support from her family or teachers. She learned that hearing loss was something to be ashamed of, something to hide. Eventually, as an adult, she became bitter and angry about her disability.

So that day, she responded the way others had responded to her, the only way she knew how to respond: with cold, dispassionate cynicism.

Of course, I didn’t realize it at the time, but that one moment defined and shaped my life for the next 30 years. I stopped telling anyone when I was bullied for my disability. I learned to hide my pain and I convinced myself that my hearing loss was something that was shameful. I became self-sufficient and spent years pretending that I didn’t need any help or support in order to hear. I just gritted my teeth and pushed through life, missing out on a lot of opportunities to build relationships and to learn and grow along the way. In some ways, I lived in that same shadow of bitterness as my mother did.

It wasn’t until I was about 36 years old, with the help of friends and a rekindled faith in God, that I realized that I needed to accept myself for who I was – hearing loss and all – so I could heal, move forward, and grow in faith and love.

I’m telling you all this not for your sympathy, but to remind you that the pain of our past – even if it’s one brief moment – can profoundly affect who we are now and who we are becoming. We all have painful memories that are an indelible part of our lives. But, although we can’t erase the pain, we can release the power it has to define us and shape us.

For the season of Advent, we’re looking at the story of Ebenezer Scrooge from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Today, we’re going to look at the second part of the story, when old Ebenezer is visited by the first of the three spirits whose appearances were foretold by Ebenezer’s dead friend, Jacob Marley. This first spirit is the Spirit of Christmas Past, a strange figure that glows with an incredibly bright light.

The spirit takes Scrooge on a journey into his past, showing him scenes from when he was a child, youth, and young adult. It seems that grouchy, bitter old Scrooge has forgotten his own story. As we discover from his journey with the Spirit, he wasn’t always a bitter and angry person.

Some of the memories are very happy ones, such as when Scrooge enjoyed the hospitality and generosity of his first boss, old Fezziwig, who threw elaborate Christmas parties for his employees and friends. The Spirit and Scrooge watch as the younger Scrooge has great fun at one such party with his friend Dick Wilkins.

But the Spirit also led Scrooge to visit memories that were painful, such as the Christmas when he was a young boy and was left alone at school, abandoned by his family and friends. And the time when his fiancé, Belle, broke their engagement.

Although we learn that Scrooge’s life included both happy experiences and painful times, we realize that the unhappy memories were the ones that defined his life. His bitterness and anger and self-centeredness grew out of the pain of abandonment and lost love. But it didn’t need to be this way; it was his choice.

In the movie version of A Christmas Carol starring Patrick Stewart, there is an added detail to the scene where Belle releases Ebenezer from the promise of marriage. When the older Scrooge watches Belle walk away, he cries out to his younger self, “Go after her! Why doesn’t he go after her?”

Scrooge realizes that at that moment, as at other times of his life, he had a choice. And he realizes that not only could he have altered this moment by choosing differently, he also could have chosen to deny that memory from having the power to define his life as a bitter, angry man.

The message for us is that we, too, have a choice. Our memories, our past experiences, are a part of us and make us who we are. We can’t change the past or erase those memories. But we can choose to allow the pain of our past to shape our lives, or not.

In the Disney movie version of A Christmas Carol, starring Jim Carrey, the Spirit of Christmas Past appears as a brightly glowing candle that guides Scrooge along his journey through his memories. When Scrooge first sees the Spirit, he begs him to cover up the bright light that emanates from his head.

But the Spirit says, “What! Would you so soon put out, with worldly hands, the light I give?”

As Christians, we have a choice: we can choose to sit and look at the candle of our life that got snuffed out or dimmed by some kind of pain that robbed us of our hope.

Or, we can light that candle of hope again by the power of God’s healing and redeeming love.

Our past, even the dark and painful parts, is a part of us, but it does not have to define us.

The story of Christmas is that God is with us always, not to prevent us from grieving, not to save us from experiencing pain, but so that our brokenness can be redeemed, so that our pain does not need to define us, and so our lives may always burn brightly with the light of hope. Amen.