Is a sharp memory good? Depends. It’s good when you remember names, birthdays, anniversaries, appointments, and promises. It’s bad when you remember past slights, insults, failures, injuries, mistakes, faux pas, other people’s faults, and every embarrassing and humiliating thing that’s ever happened to you.

Even worse than remembering those negative things is stressing over them, obsessing over them, fuming over them, hating on yourself over them, consumed in ancient resentments, trapped in an endless memory loop in which you are the fool.

It’s time to let go of your pain memories. They don’t define you. In Christ you are a new creation every day. Washed by his grace, honored with a new identity, loved by your Father, empowered by the Spirit, you can choose your self-image. You are walking toward an endless future in heaven; you are Satan’s slave no more: “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:12-14).

Take out the trash and leave it out there. Look in the windshield, not the rearview.