Can you go home again?

Today at "Reading and Rambling Moms" I posted a discussion about going home after a long absence. In my case, 25 years had passed since I'd last set eyes on my childhood home -- the green stucco siding, the screened-in porch, the little "Tervetuola" popsicle stick under the mailbox that had been nailed there to welcome our Finnish exchange student's parents.

It was all gone. The house that was there bore no resemblance to the one I remembered.

I also had a chance to see a high-school friend, who was the music director for a high-school production of "Seussical." It was great seeing him in action again -- and meeting his wife and son -- but I came away from the experience feeling a bit down.

As human beings, we have been created with eyes in the front of our heads -- not in the back, to look behind us. In a very real sense, there is no going back to the past; the choices we have made in the interim have changed us, and in turn changed even our memories.

Can you think of a time when this realization hit you, when you realized that you needed to let go of some aspect of the past in order to fully embrace God's plan for your life, right here and now?