For most of my life, I spent very little time living in the present. Instead, I bounced back and forth between worrying about the future and beating myself up over the past. I wasn’t consciously aware that I was ignoring the present. I was just too busy flitting between the stress of tomorrow and the guilt of yesterday.
And then later in life, I was diagnosed with PTSD for a different matter, and I was sent to a counselor. She could see immediately that I wasn’t “present”. She asked me how much time I spent living in the moment, and it hit me like a ton of bricks that the answer was, “almost none”.
It was suddenly clear to me that by spending all my time “bouncing” I had missed out on so much.
But, the biggest thing I realized was this:
God lives in the present.
He said, “I Am”, not “I was” or “I’m going to be”. No, “I Am”.
Credit: iStock | Emily Norton
The way I had been living was the very opposite of faith.
That’s not to say that the path to healing was easy once I realized this. I had been living that frenzied way for so long that it felt natural to me. My counselor had to force me to sit in real time. I hated it and my mind would leap madly between guilt and worry. I’d try and bring up a past mistake or a future fear and she would stop me and tell me again to just sit in the present. To be honest, it really made me mad. I was comfortable with my jumpy mind and the present felt weird and wrong.
After lots of work, I began to see the beauty of the present and it was a bit easier to stop and take it in, and the more I practiced, the more I liked it.
Credit: iStock | Peter Berglund
I still have to fight the urge to revisit the past and the future and the stress, fear and guilt that live there. I have to yell, “Stop!” (in my mind) whenever my brain takes off again. I don’t know if it will ever be natural for me to be able to sit in the moment for any length of time. So, I continue to practice. I put my phone down, I take deep breaths, I look around at the wonder of God’s creation and I smile at the fact that I am right where I’m supposed to be.
It has been worth the fight to break old patterns and learn to live in the present. The present is a gift from God, and you deserve it. You really do.
“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” Matthew 6:34
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Read more of Ann’s contributions to allmomdoes here.
