No Closure? No Excuse

“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 wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” - Isaiah 43:18-19 
 
If you want to embark on a new journey, one filled with new opportunities and new possibilities, there are things you are going to have to come to terms with. It can be hard to come to terms with things in our past that are often painful, traumatic, and disappointing.  

Oftentimes, one of the only ways we can move forward is by gaining closure from the people that caused us so much hurt and harm in our past. Closure is defined by psychologists as the ability to receive information or an understanding that allows a person to obtain clarity, healing, and resolution for a traumatic, upsetting, or confusing life event.
 
To get closure, you want to know why a relationship ended. You want to know why a parent that you love(d) did not show you the kind of love you think you deserved as a child. And the reason closure is so critical is because, as humans, we understand the world through stories.

We create a past, present, and future, and we navigate our world day to day by structuring the events of our lives based on this cognitive understanding. Because of this, to move on to something new, such as a new chapter in life, we feel as though we must close or end the last chapter.
 
Closure is the tool that we want to use to end one chapter so that we can begin writing the next one. But unfortunately, you can’t always get closure. It might be because the person who hurt you isn’t sorry for what they did. It might be because the person who did you wrong isn’t even aware of how their actions affected you.

Even if you find yourself in that kind of situation, be encouraged because your ability to step into God’s will isn’t based on closure. There is no verse that says you need closure. Instead, God simply commands us to “forget the former things.”  

Isaiah 43:18-19 says, “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 wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”
 
You don’t need closure. You just need to be obedient. No matter how hard it may seem, let God lead you into this next chapter, whether you have closure from your past or not.