There is a theory that everything that is written, that everything that happens was destined to happen. Sometimes it certainly seems this way. Not always, but sometimes, sometimes often, it appears that two people, for instance, were fated to meet and marry, whether the marriage works out or not. We have talked about this before, Destiny vs. Free Will. Perhaps Free Will is your Destiny, or Destiny is your Free Will.

Be that as it may, there is some value in thinking that what is past was destined. Whether what happened is to your credit or to your dismay, there is value in thinking that it was destined. Thinking that it was destined will save you a lot of woe. Thinking that all the past was destined makes you face the fact, without discussion, that there is nothing you can do about it now.

The concept of Destiny may keep you out of the trap of ruing, regretting, crying about the past. The idea of Destiny may get it through your head that there is no point in crying over spilled milk. There is not a better way to say this than crying over spilled milk.

How much of your time on Earth have you spent in regret and trying to relive and remake the past? How much time have you spent carting the past around with you when you could have gotten on with your life?

How much time have you wasted in wishing you could go back in time and erase what passed and do it over and make it new? How you have wanted to undo the past and say something else or say nothing or to speak up when you had been silent?

In a way, you are a writer of your life. Unlike a writer, you can’t rewrite. You can’t cross out.

In a way, every day you write a chapter. And when the day is over, that particular chapter is finished. That chapter is closed. It has to be left as it is.

Now there is something else, however. Although it makes great sense to leave a past chapter alone, and I recommend wholeheartedly that you not turn back, there also can be value in revisiting a chapter that is over. Can you guess what this possible advantage of going over an unchangeable chapter could be?

What I think of is that you may see the exact same chapter in a different way. What you were convinced was a mistake may in a later re-reading seem not like a mistake at all but just right.

The chapter is the same, yet you see it with new eyes. Upon this second reading, you may not seem to be the oaf you had thought you were. Is this not a good thing? You are not spending time agonizing over the past. Rather, you are seeing the past in a new light! You digest it differently, and that is all the difference in the world.

So, what if you could have the idea that not only is the past finis, the past was also right. It held more merit than you ever attributed to it.

Beloveds, every chapter that is written, no matter how homely, how winsome, how troublesome, led you to where you are today. With this realization, would you then be so quick to knock it?

A particular chapter may have been a broken step, one you wished you had skipped, but what if, no matter what, it was a good step because it led you to where you are today?

Are you not indeed in a good place when My words are before you today and you are reading them and letting them become part of you?