I started watching the new series on ABC, “Samantha Who?” I really like it a lot, which is saying something because there is very little on TV that I like at all these days.
It’s about a woman who has amnesia and cannot remember anything of her former life. As she meets people and starts to piece together who she is (or was), she realizes that she does not like that person. The show chronicles Sam as she tries to find out who she wants to be, while realizing that she is stuck with the fallout of the actions of her former self.
For example, she discovers that she works for a firm that aggressively acquires real estate through less than honorable means. She decides that she wants to quit, until she finds out that old Sam left her with $30,000 in credit card debt.
If you want to check it out, ABC offers full episodes online, which is an awesome feature.
Anyway, at the end of this week’s show, Sam offered the following closing monologue.
I had this dream and I woke up clean and white as snow, my debts forgiven, and my sins all washed away.
That sounds awesome!
But, it’s a bunch of crap.
I mean, yesterday can’t be un-lived. It’s part of today. You drag it along like a big, old dog.
I heard this and my heart just sank. I mean, I know that our sins can be washed away, yet I also know that the truth is, we do carry around the past like a big, old dog. And man, I hate dogs, especially big ones.
I felt so conflicted, so disappointed, so lost. It brought up some feelings that I didn’t even know I was having about God and about my life.
When I came to Christ, I was already living a pretty good life. Bob and I were happily married and had a beautiful son. I was involved in local politics and writing a column for our local paper. I was happy, but deep down I carried with me the burden of childhood hurts and the pain brought on by the immoral lifestyle I had once lived. Way down in the places where I would never let myself go, I was very broken.
I brought these hurts to the cross and I had the pain lifted and healed in a way that I never knew possible. I was free. I was whole for the first time in my life.
As time passed, though, I began to feel beaten down by the reality that, while my guilt and shame could be washed away, the consequences of my actions would always be with me, for me to drag around like a big, old dog. I will never be free from that.
I started to feel like I had been sold a bill of goods. I started to think that maybe it is all just a bunch of crap. What good is forgiveness when I still have to deal with the fallout of the actions of my former self?
Samantha ended her monologue on a more positive note.
Today is all we can control. We do today right, we may even have a shot at tomorrow.
And this is where grace comes in. It’s not about erasing our past; it’s about carrying us through today.
We can’t control today. We can’t do it right, either. Oh, we can try and we can do the best we can, but it will never be good enough. We will always make mistakes. We will always have regrets.
What we can do is walk with Jesus by our side. What we can do is accept that He has forgiven our sins and restored our relationship with Him.
We might not be able to do today right on our own, but we can do today right with the power that comes with knowing the One who created us.
There is really no getting around the fact that there are problems in our lives that we cannot leave behind no matter how much we want to. But dragging around a big, old dog doesn’t seem like quite as much work when you have someone with infinite strength helping you pull it along.
