I busted my mirror backing out of the garage last night. It reminds me of the time I backed into a tree. The back bumper fell off, and no matter how many times I stopped to put it back on, it kept falling off and dragging behind me. My kids laughed, people pointed and stared, and I sat, staring straight ahead, knowing full well what was dragging behind.

The broken mirror now flaps in the wind, ready to take flight, much like we do when trouble comes our way. The mirror reflects what is behind, just as our hearts do when deep-seated hurts resurface.

Sometimes, life can break us. We only see or reflect upon the past and what has been done to us, or what we have done. We cling to the could, would, shoulds, never fully stepping forward or dealing with the pain endured.

Our focus is not to be on what’s behind, but the promises we have in Christ moving forward. I’ve learned that sometimes a trigger brings up something that we haven’t dealt with entirely or released fully to the Lord. Nobody wants to revisit or linger in the past, but sometimes it becomes necessary to move forward. I think of Joseph when he saw his brothers for the first time since they sold him into slavery. I can empathize with his feelings, can’t you! O Lord, prove to me they are not the same people they were so many years ago.

This life gives us many broken views and perceptions on who God is and what He has done for us. It gets lost in the rhetoric of the chaos. It’s not so much about God proving to Joseph or us that people have changed, but showing us the hardened areas of our hearts, that we may become tender to His healing.