The Danger of Longing for the Past
I was sitting at my desk recently, fighting back anxiety, when I caught myself longing for the past, for “simpler times.” The stress of work, the surge of COVID, and launching a book were weighing on me, and I mumbled in my head, “If only I was back in college or in my early years of marriage with less responsibility and no kids. Life was so much easier back then.”
But it didn’t take long for me to remind myself how dangerous this kind of thinking is. And I want to help you avoid the same trap, because I think now, more than ever, we find ourselves longing for the old days (for “precedented times”), and it’s actually one of the tools the devil uses to trip us up.
First, let me explain something about myself. Almost a decade ago, I was diagnosed with anxiety and OCD. It was one of the most freeing moments of my life because there’s power in naming something. In fact, that’s what the whole first chapter of my book is about. But while naming it was freeing, it also meant that my life, up until that point, was filled with a lot of headache, heartache, frustration, and confusion. My marriage didn’t almost crumble; it was crumbling. My wife was “walking on eggshells,” as she said.
To be honest, I have no idea how I ever made it through high school, college, or those early years of my marriage before I named what was going on inside of me and got help. Those years were absolutely chaotic. After one particularly bad episode over the wrong sweetener in my coffee, my wife sat in front of me sobbing, begging for something to change. Intrusive thoughts controlled my mind. I would reread emails up to fifty times, or convince myself that I had run someone over after hitting a bump in the road, going around the block three times just to make sure I hadn’t.
In other words, in an effort to escape my recent struggle, I found myself longing for a time in my life that was actually marked by deep pain and struggle. Go figure.
So why was I longing for those times? It seems counterintuitive when I put it like that. I think it’s because one of the most reliable traps the devil sets for us is to tempt us with escapism. And one of the biggest forms of escapism is idolizing the past. When we do this, we become restless and take our focus off what God is doing now.
C. S. Lewis correctly called this out. In The Screwtape Letters, the chief demon advises his young apprentice to increase the patient’s anxiety by getting him to focus particularly on the future, but also on the past.
“Our business is to get them away from the eternal, and from the Present,” the demon says. “With this in view, we sometimes tempt a human (say a widow or a scholar) to live in the Past.”
I fell into that trap of idolizing the past, even though the past has been so painful.
Looking back can be good, but only when it’s done in a healthy way. If you’re looking back to remember God’s faithfulness, then by all means check that rearview mirror. But that’s not what I was doing. And I’m going to go out on a limb and guess it’s not what you tend to do either.
Let me put it like this: I think there’s a difference between looking back at the past and longing for the past. The former involves searching out God’s faithfulness, the latter is looking for an escape. The former is healthy. The latter is unhealthy and distracting. Again, when we are longing for and being consumed by the past, we miss what God is doing now. We miss not only the lessons he’s teaching us but the work we can be a part of.
So here’s how I want to encourage you: if God was faithful enough to redeem your past, he’s going to be faithful enough to redeem your present.
Whatever struggle you’re going through, whatever anxiety you’re facing now, whatever COVID variant or mandate that might pop up next, God is most definitely at work. He’s using it for your good. He promises that (Romans 5:3-5, 8:28). And he delivers on his promises.
If you ever forget that, just look back in the right way.
(Jon) is the author of Finding Rest: A Survivor’s Guide to Navigating the Valleys of Anxiety, Faith, and Life. He lives in Dallas, Texas, with his wife and two kids. You can visit him at jonseidl.com and follow him on Twitter and Instagram @jonseidl.
Photograph © Amaurys Puello Martinez, used with permission
