Goodbye Yesterday

Don’t Look Back

When I was five years old, my parents sold our dryer. Right before the clothes were folded, I would climb on top of the warm pile, using the cylinder space as a warm hideout. There was nothing particularly special about this dryer-- it was brown and had a few rust spots, but I sure loved that aged appliance. Before the buyer showed up at our apartment, I climbed back into the dryer one last time and took a black permanent marker with me so I could sign the back wall. There is a possibility that if someone collects antique appliances, there is still Laura Spencer scribbled in broken penmanship as a testament to the resiliency of Sharpie signatures.  The dryer was loaded onto a rickety old trailer as I hid, staring in disbelief. As the truck pulled away, I watched my trusty old dryer disappear down the street. A few tears slid down my cheeks. I couldn’t believe they would get rid of our precious dryer, and I had no interest in meeting the new one.

I share this early childhood moment because it’s the first time I carry a memory of having a deep attachment to something and not wanting to move on to the possibility of something new. I have always carried a deep sentimental value for even the simplest things. I cried on the last day of school EVERY YEAR, I stared at pictures of the previous holidays and would suddenly spiral, wishing I could relive the day, and become devastated that I could not. I kept a beautiful pink stuffed bunny for over thirty years, named Honey Bum, not because it was a poor excuse for a bunny, but because I couldn’t pronounce Honey Bun. I lost him during a move, but I am still holding out to be reconnected with him someday. Every vacation, I grieved like it was a death as we pulled away from the beach house or hotel to head back to Kentucky. My heart would ache so deeply for the normalcy of the past five days, and I would carefully consider never going on vacation again to avoid the pain of the pack-up. I know these scenarios might seem dramatic, because they are, but I would not face the true test of this heartache until I had to say good-bye to much bigger things. When we love deeply, we hurt deeply, and learning not to look back has been the most freeing epiphany I have experienced in my first four decades on earth.

My husband had just been to a meeting with someone very close to him when I walked into the garage where he was editing photos. His face looked very serious, an expression I don’t see often.

“How did the meeting go?” I asked him, afraid to hear the answer. He had been praying for direction for our family and had suggested we take a break from ministry. 

“Laura, we aren’t going back,” he told me, and suddenly I felt like I was back in that apartment watching my precious dryer pull away. 

“What do you mean we aren’t going back?” I pleaded. 

“At least for a little while. We need to pray for direction and wisdom.”

Wisdom was my one word for 2025, so this was a hard pill for me to swallow. I had prayed for wisdom this year, and little did I know I would be given multiple (painful) opportunities to run to Him, requesting it. One day, I picked up one of Josh’s books, and the opening chapter talked about how most people live past-present instead of in the present-future. In other words, many of us get so focused on the past, we allow it to swallow the present and can’t even see the future. Living present-future is being fully in-the-moment AND acknowledging the beauty of what’s ahead. 

I struggle with present-future living. I think about the story of Lot’s wife in Genesis 19 and how, if I could offer her a warning, I might yell: “Don’t look back!” before she got herself turned into a pillar of salt. The first Sunday we visited our extended family’s church, it was my mom’s birthday, so my emotions were all over the place. I had decided that if I could not be at my church home, I would just as well choose to not attend church anywhere. I could remember thinking as I got ready that morning, that I would be fine to never worship corporately another day in my life. In fact, some things that had transpired were so painful, cut so deeply, that I loved the idea of never facing that level of rejection again. I would just sign my name in Sharpie on the wall of my home church and never climb into another dryer again. I didn’t care if it was bigger or more shiny.

“Goodbye, yesterday

I'm livin' in the light of a new day

I won't waste another minute in my old ways

Praise the Lord, I've been born again

Goodbye, yesterday

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me

I've got resurrection in my veins

Praise the Lord, I've been born again.”

I felt it when I walked in the door— joy and freedom. This song was playing as a member of the worship team danced in place, and hands all over the room lifted in praise. It was the very first time I had heard the phrase “Goodbye Yesterday,” and something in my spirit man was shouting “Amen!” The entire service was full of hope and life, and yet I was struggling to fully surrender my pain. Voices greeted me, a few familiar, most faces new to me. Thoughts ran wild in my head. 

“These are not your people.”

“Joy is not for this season of your life, you should be mourning.”

“These congregants have heard your story through the grapevine. Shame. Shame. Shame.”

“Look how you are a fish out of water. You do not belong here.”

“Do not make eye contact with anyone and they might not approach you.”

“You will get hurt if you let them in.  Keep your guard up.”

“Just look how happy they are. There must be a catch.”

Most weeks, it felt like I was dragging myself into church, avoiding connection to guard my heart. I felt skeptical of kind words and often battled confusion, too. But this anthem was on replay in my heart when I made time to be alone with Him. 

“Again and again and again and again

You rescued me out of the mess I was in

You traded my sorrow for something to sing

Now, I'm dancin' on the grave that I once lived in

Come on, we sing--

I have decided to follow Jesus

The world behind, the Cross before

Again I won't turn back (yeah)

I have decided to follow Jesus

The world behind, the Cross before

And I won't turn back”

The words to this song were in direct contradiction to the words in my head and I was struggling to process it all. My church home was truly home—I had been there for twenty years and every life milestone you can think of happened within those walls. Making the decision to follow Jesus, meeting my husband and getting married, the dedication of my babies, every holiday, my last Christmas with mom’s family before she passed away, my mom’s celebration of life, Joy Comes in the Morning, and every single person that we did life with. Not going back for even a short time was watching that dryer pull away down the street and out of my sight. It hurt. It stung. And my heart was broken. Week after week, I sat as close to the back as possible, fully aware of the presence of God in the room and yet fully broken, too, rejecting the very ones who were already walking in freedom through similar healing. Smiles greeted me. Several hugged me. The pastor checked on me. And yet, the blanket of shame from my past experiences draped over my shoulders creating a contradictory identity to my original design. My heart posture said leave me alone and please go away instead of being open and receptive. I still attended on Sunday mornings, I showed up on Wednesday nights, I visited Monday women’s study, I brought my children to the fall outreach, and yet I was wading in the deep end with no floaties on and my legs were tired from treading water. 

In an instant, I encountered the truth and my heart began to change. Worship was in full swing and I was tired of pretending. I didn’t want to wear the mantle of shame, operate as a fish out of water, or avoid the people who were sent to offer me hope any longer. The words to the song dug deep into my cracked places that Wednesday evening. 

“I don’t want anyone else.

I don’t need anything else. 

You are my one thing.

You are my one thing.”

Wait a minute— my one thing. The words left my lips. “You are my one thing.” The past three months I hadn’t treated Jesus like my one thing at all. I had bowed to all the things. 

Fear.

Anxiety. 

Shame.

Pride.

Hopelessness.

Despair.

Desperate grasps at control. 

Grief.

  I had not been operating like someone who did not want anything else. I had bowed to a lot of things that weren’t the best God had for me. I had been distracted by a lot of noise. Without all that noise, I could sense a better way. I did not want anyone else. He WAS my one thing. It was not about the building I was so familiar with or the precious people who were my family that I felt like I was leaving behind. It was not about this beautiful body of people surrounding us week after week, now either. It was about Jesus being my one thing and I had lost sight of that. I asked God to forgive me for making “comfort” my idol, for telling him I don’t trust him through the thoughts I allowed to visit me on replay. I asked him to be my one thing again. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I could feel my heart softening as I laid rejection,  pain, and shame at his feet. If HE was my one thing, the title on a church sign or the people I shook hands with would matter much less than beholding his face. He was right there. 

And after that, I made a promise to God that I would not look back. When we stay in our past season, we miss what he’s doing in the right now season. Lot and his family were spared from destruction and given the chance at a fresh start but she chose to look back, the very thing they were told not to do when they were brought out of the city. I think about it often these days. The words “don’t look back.” There’s good and bad in my past, there’s choices that I would make differently today and there’s people I had to go to and ask for forgiveness. At the end of the day “don’t look back” to me, means for me to keep my heart soft, and that’s exactly what I plan to do. I cling to the prayer: “Lord make me slow to anger, slow to speak, and quick to listen— and purify my heart to keep you my one thing.”