I have been ministering—particularly to women—for the past twenty-seven years, both through my radio ministry and as director of women’s ministries for this church, and it saddens me to see so many women who are missing the good things God put them here to do, the richness of the abundant life Jesus came to give us, simply because they hang on to “stuff”—attitudes and fears, perspectives and conclusions, blind spots and warped ideas—that keep them mired in self-pity or anger or fear or depression.  No doubt men have similar struggles, but I’m most acquainted with how we women handle life.

There have been so many times when I’ve listened to a woman tell her story, or read the email she sent me, and everything in me wanted to look her in the eye and say, in today’s vernacular,  “Get over it!”  So much of what is troubling us is something we could and should get over, put behind us, and let it go.  And yet we cling to this stuff that clutters our lives with sadness and holds us back because it has become a part of us, and we don’t even realize it.

Like a pig to a mudhole, we keep going back to a place that gets us dirty, makes us unsightly and smelly, and keeps us from moving forward to the good things God has for us.  Isaiah 43:18 and 19 is a passage of great hope:

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.

How often we miss the new thing that springs up because we can’t get over something from our past.  It could be the distant past or what happened five minutes ago, but these things become the mudholes of our lives where we wallow on a daily basis and never find the way in the desert and the streams in the wasteland.

There is certainly a place for long-term, in-depth Christian counseling for people, and I’m fully aware of that great need.  But I am convinced that there are still many daily issues all of us face, which don’t really require a lot of advance education or knowledge to deal with successfully.  We simply need to get over it.

I so want my life to be focused on what it important eternally, and I’m sure you do, too. Life is too short to spend our days in bondage to petty things. For the sake of the Gospel, let’s get over it and move forward.