Sorry for missing my blog last week. I was swamped and totally forgot until it was well into the day. Hopefully, that won’t happen again.

I had a great time at the Women’s Event at the 1st Alliance Church in Great Falls, MT and wanted to share a little bit with you. There were about 80 people in attendance.

The church advertised it as a “Novel Luncheon with Tracie Peterson” and they put on a wonderfully catered lunch with a trio of singers who were so phenomenal. By the time I got up to speak, I already felt that I was in the company of good friends.

My focus was on Letting go of the Past. I used the verses from Isaiah 43:18 & 19.

“Forget the Former Things; Do not dwell on the past.

See, I am doing a new thing!

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the desert

and streams in the wasteland.”

One of the things that God keeps bringing me back to is how we drag around the past and it weighs us down and makes the journey much less fun. It’s like taking a trip somewhere you’ve always wanted to go, but packing 3 really heavy suitcases of stuff to take along. You spend all your time worrying about that stuff, checking on it–pulling it out to use–putting it away to keep safe. You bear the burden of all that extra weight–and in the process the trip is no longer as much fun as it might otherwise have been.

My husband and I have gone to England several times – sometimes for as much as two weeks at a time.

We’ve learned to pack light. In fact – we can do 2 wks abroad with nothing more than a back pack each. However, one year we went and took large suitcases. We were concerned for some reason about having enough stuff and packing room for presents. We were miserable.

Dragging around extra weight whether physical or emotional is never any fun. It serves one major purpose and that is to exhaust you. Oh sure, with more luggage we had more choices of clothes, didn’t have to wash anything out, and brought back more presents. But by discarding the extra burdens we were freed up to move quickly, get into places that we might not have gone with large bags, and truly had more energy. The same is true for emotional baggage from the past. It is so difficult to move forward when you’re dragging the past along with you and I think that was one of the big reasons God gave us these verses.

So today, I’m encouraging you to dump the baggage. “Forget the former things.” Do not be exhausted by dragging around a bunch of unnecessary stuff. “Do not dwell on the past.”

Let God do a new thing and watch streams pop up in the wastelands of your life.