Life Is Too Short: What a Stranger Taught Me About Letting Go of the Past

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A parcel, a queue, and a sentence I couldn't shake

This morning I stood in the post office holding a huge, heavy parcel, ready to send it off to a speech therapist who is just starting out. Inside were the tools of my old life... 34 years of them, sorted into neat, categorised boxes. This one was labelled vocabulary building. And as I waited in the queue to hand over a piece of my past, a stranger said something that I have not been able to put down since.

The boxes that keep you tethered to who you used to be

There is a particular ache that comes with sorting through the life you used to have.

For me, it lives in cardboard boxes. Decades of resources, carefully built, from a career I loved and did well. A career that did not end the way I planned. It ended rather abruptly, because I was needed elsewhere, caring for people I love. One season closed so another could open, and I did not get to choose the timing.

And here is the honest bit. Those boxes have sat there as reminders. Every time I look at them, they whisper who I used to be. The title I used to hold. The competence I used to feel. And it is so easy, isn't it, to keep one hand on the past, just in case. To keep the boxes. To keep looking backward at the woman you were, instead of forward at the woman God is still making.

If you have a version of those boxes... a drawer, a wardrobe, a room, a role you cannot quite put down... then you already know exactly what I mean.

Scripture is gentler and more honest about this than we are. "A time to keep and a time to throw away." (Ecclesiastes 3:6, NLT) There is a holy timing even to letting go.

What if letting go of the past is the most faithful thing you'll do?

We tend to treat letting go as giving up. As if holding on tightly to what was is loyalty, and releasing it is failure. But I wonder if the opposite is true.

I wonder if letting go of the past is sometimes the most faithful, most trusting thing a woman can do.

Listen to Paul, a man who had every reason to cling to his old credentials. "Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race..." (Philippians 3:13-14, NLT) He does not say the past was worthless. He says he will not let it hold him still. Forgetting, here, is not amnesia. It is refusing to keep living in a chapter God has already turned.

And then this, which stopped me in the queue this morning. "For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness." (Isaiah 43:19, NLT) Already begun. Not one day, when you feel ready. Already.

Here is what undid me. That heavy parcel was not really a loss. It was a passing on. My 34 years, my carefully built resources, are about to become the beginning of someone else's calling. A young therapist, just starting out, will open those boxes with the same hope I once had. My past is becoming her beginning. And that freed something in me. My old life was not wasted. It was complete. And a completed thing can be released with gratitude, not grief.

One box, one prayer, one honest goodbye

So here is your gentle practice, and it is a small one. Do not clear the whole room. Just choose one thing. One box, one object, one reminder that keeps you looking backward.

This is my Spirit-Led Sketch Method, and it works beautifully as a ritual of release. First, prepare and pray, just a breath: Lord, I am here, and I am willing. Then ask him one honest question: What am I ready to release... and what are you making room for? Then doodle whatever surfaces. It might be an open hand. A door opening onto light. A road leading out of a wood. Do not make it pretty. Make it true. And finally, reflect on what came up as you drew.

You are not throwing your history away. You are thanking it, and setting it down, so both your hands are free for what comes next. Some things we keep by holding them. Others we honour by letting them go.

Marrakech, a lottery ticket, and the life that's still yours

Now let me tell you what the stranger said.

She was a woman in her 40s, and she told me, quite matter-of-factly, that she has been in remission from cancer for 16 months. She had just spent about £15 on lottery tickets, and she was planning a holiday to Marrakech. And as she gathered her things to leave, she said the sentence I carried home with me. "Life is too short."

She was right, of course. "LORD, remind me how brief my time on earth will be." (Psalm 39:4, NLT) She had stared down something most of us try very hard not to think about, and she had come out the other side buying lottery tickets and booking somewhere warm, determined to actually live. And there I stood, clutching a box of my past, hesitating on the edge of my own new beginning.

Life is too short to keep looking at the boxes. Too short to keep one hand on who you used to be. Too short to wait until you feel ready to want your own life again.

You don't have to step into the new life alone

If you have been standing where I was standing this morning... one hand on the past, one heart quietly longing for a new beginning... I want you to know there is a gentle, guided way to walk into it. Planted with Purpose is my 6-week journey back to clarity, creativity and calling, for the woman who is ready to stop looking backward and finally ask, what is the dream God has placed in me for this next season?

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Life really is too short. And the pathway through the wilderness has already begun.

A Space to Bring Your Whole Self

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Come and find me at https://christianartjournaling.com/creative2026  ~ there's a whole community of women here who are finding their way back to God, one mark at a time.