Hub Families: Learning from the past….

This week we had some good friends over for supper.  Although we have known each other for several years we had never really told them much about our lives before coming to Beeding.  As a part of the conversation, we got on the subject of our life working in a poor community in Ecuador.  Well, they ‘pressed our button’ and all these stories poured out, which seemed to dominate the evening, but our friends graciously smiled and nodded as we unloaded story after story of our time working with the urban poor in a pre-school in Los Vergeles, Guayaquil.

As we told the stories, it was like we were reliving the feelings, the blessings and the pain, the achievements and the disappointments, the friendships and the struggles.  It was (for us at least) a cathartic time of remembering, and being thankful for the experiences, both the good and the challenging.

Looking back is such an important part of our life’s perspective.  Sure, we must not live in the past, but if we ignore the things we have been through we can never allow those experiences to shape our present reality.  Some of the past memories we acknowledge and then leave in the past, others we use to catapult us into new understandings of who we are or how we react or what we learn.  It can be a challenging experience but as our evening this week proved, it reminds us of how far we have come in life and how our past experiences form a part, at least,  of the people we are today.

Could we, should we, do the same with lock-down? 

As lock-down eases, and we are getting out and about more and more (albeit masked-up), are we in danger of forgetting some of the experiences that we have faced these past months?  I hope not.  I hope that instead we can always remember the blessing and the pain, the achievements and the disappointments, and allow them to shape the people we are today.  Whilst we must not live in the past of course, we can reflect on it, acknowledge it and learn from it.

If I can help you with any of this, I am here to love you and serve you. Just get in touch, just click HERE.

This week’s HubKids has lots more fun activities to do as a family It’s a great chance to find new ways of connecting together. You can find the activities and what you need to do them HERE