Ramblings from Retirement – Forget About It

Ramblings from Retirement – Forget About It

By Lee Hemen

May 1, 2021

I shared before that I’ve been going through pictures and stuff my mother had for decades at my brother’s house. A huge trunk now converted to four medium sized cardboard boxes. She passed away several years ago at the age of 92 and lived a pretty full life. She only had a 7th grade education getting her education in a one room school, lived in a circus tent in the Wyoming wilderness, survived the Kelly Flood in 1927 in Wyoming when the Gros Ventre River broke through a natural earthen dam caused from a mud slide several years earlier, and she could ride, shoot, and roll her own cigarettes with one hand. Later she left home at the age of 15 or 16 and followed her sister to Alaska, another wilderness. She worked in the newly built Coca Cola bottling plant and there met my father who asked her to marry him several times refusing him every time but the last. All of that to say this that she lived quite a life.

However what got me to thinking again was about a man who was a friend she had known in Wyoming and later knew again in Alaska. His name was Julius Russell. I came across newspaper clippings and several photographs of him in my mother’s things, including his personal diary. What makes this interesting is that this young man, who was a photographer and artist, went off into the Chandalar Alaskan wilderness on his own without a gun or fishing equipment. They found his body a year later. He had probably starved to death. He was 30 years old.

As I sat there thinking about the diary, the photographs, and newspaper clippings I found it kind of sad especially after I tried to get in touch with any family of his to return the diary and things. I have had no luck whatsoever and then God kind of nudged me and reminded me what He’d told Isaiah to tell the Israelites when Isaiah knew they were going to go into exile again. God tells Isaiah to tell them, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. (Isaiah 43:18 NIV)” Now this is interesting because God often tells the Israelites to remember how they were saved from slavery, escaped through the Red Sea, brought them out of bondage, and chose them from all the other peoples of the earth to be His own. And yet here he tells Isaiah to forget former things and not to linger on the things of the past, why? I believe God does so because He knew that what they were going to go through in the near future and it would be harsh. Some things are best left in the past because it is too harsh to remember what occurred, what they had, and what they had to leave behind.

I wish I could find Julius Russell’s family but I may not be able to and I may have to leave it in the past. And shouldn’t we all do that sometimes? We often like to dwell in the past thinking that if we feel guilty enough then we can forgive ourselves and be cleansed from our guilt. But this is not true. God can and does forgive us and completely forgets our sins when we come to Him by faith. Yet we still cling to the past. Maybe like Paul we should “not consider (ourselves) yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing (we should) do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, (we should) press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called (us) heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have already attained. (Philippians 3:13-16 NIV)”

Today dear children of the Lord “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.” Forget about it and allow God to handle the tough things you want to dwell on and feel guilty over.

This article is copyrighted © 2021 by Lee Hemen and is the sole property of Lee Hemen, and may not be used unless you quote the entire article and have my permission.