Our Destiny Isn't The Problem, It's Our Contaminated Past

​Destiny.

So close but yet so so far.

But why?

"I come to church to hear about my destiny. And my destiny sounds so wonderful. And he's good, and he's wonderful, and he's good all the time. And everything's wonderful in the name of the Lord. And coming to his house with thanksgiving is wonderful.
And they tell me about my destiny:

- I'm an overcomer.
- I've got the power of God in me.
- They tell me that my mouth can speak and things can change.
- They tell me about my destiny.

But when I leave the parking lot, I drive smack into my history. My history contaminates my destiny." ~T.D. Jakes

So often it's not our destiny that is out of reach, it's our histories standing in its way.

And this isn't just a church thing.

We long for the beauty of our destiny of marriage, but then our histories show up, our histories of having no idea how to share and process emotions, our histories of feeling like every small piece of criticism is a giant attack on our worth. And then we follow our historic pattern or avoidance and isolation.

Marriages often fail not because we weren't destined for marriage, but because we hadn't cleaned up the contamination of all we've been married to in the past.

So many young people struggling in school, not because they are destined to be uneducated, but because they show up to school with the contamination of all that makes it difficult for them to trust, to relate, to listen - to embrace peace when all they've known is chaos.

It's easy to accuse one of being unwilling to accept their destiny when the reality is they have been unable to fix the contamination of their past. I say to you with great experience, it is much easier to believe in your destiny than it is to heal and fix the contamination of the past blocking your entrance to it.

When your life strategy has long been hiding your contamination and not cleaning it up, living with contamination becomes much easier than leaning into a destiny completely incompatible with your contaminated history.

Easier that is, until you see your sweet destiny drifting so far into the future that it becomes unrecognizable.

Contaminated...

When you grow up believing the role of God is to decide whether your destiny is eternal heaven or eternal hell, it's very difficult to accept that God wants to walk with you to your destiny and not simply wait at the end of it, quite eager to decide whether or not you are worthy of going any further.

So many beautiful possibilities in our lives - God and otherwise - that our histories sit waiting to contaminate.

How do we fix that?

It starts by recognizing the smell of our contaminations. Their voices. Their motives.

It starts when we pull out of the parking lot, feeling beautiful about our destination, only to have the beauty rocked by some sudden disbelief in the reality of that beauty. And in that moment, somehow coming to recognize this is not an unbelievable destination but a contaminated past.

It starts with recognizing the patterns of those disbeliefs - those sudden shifts in direction - and breaking free from them. Breaking free from the people, places, things and memories that trigger those shifts.

For it is not our destinations we need to fear or doubt, but the histories of our pasts that contaminate them. The path to the future is quite often finding the path that walks away from the past.