Josh and I adopted our two children through the foster care system. When we adopted our children, we took trips back to the town they were from to participate in an adoption ceremony. The trip back for our son’s adoption was very hard on our daughter. She has so many difficult memories from that town. As we drove around, she kept asking us if we were going to adopt our son and return home. We had to reassure her over, and over, and over again that we would all go home after his adoption and that we would stay a family.

One of the days we were there, we happened to drive past the DSS office. We hoped she wouldn’t see it, because the sight of it usually brings a flood of negative emotion for her. But she did see it, and she pointed it out. “Look, Mommy,” she said, pointing to the building. “You adopt me too. Me not go back there anymore.” I was overcome with a flood of emotion so great that I couldn’t even respond. “You’re right, sweetie,” my husband assured her. “You don’t have to go back there anymore.”

Her words stuck with me for weeks. And each time I thought of her words, I continued to think of the spiritual connection as well. I thought about the nation of Israel, redeemed from slavery in Egypt. It didn’t take them long to forget where they had come from and want to go back. They over-idealized their past life when the going got tough. “Better to have meat in Egypt than die in the wilderness!” they complained to Moses. How quickly they forgot what they had been redeemed from and to Whom they were indebted. How quickly they forgot the mighty works of God. They forgot how they had groaned under the weight of oppression and lacked gratitude for their deliverance.

I thought of them entering into the Promised Land. Here was part of God’s covenant promise to Abraham fulfilled. They had seen conquest won, divine provision made, and miracles performed. Yet they quickly forgot again. Instead of keeping their covenant with God, they sought after the false gods of the Canaanites. They neglected God and turned their backs on him over, and over, and over again. They rejected him as King and set up earthly leaders who would fail them.

Then I thought of the New Testament. I thought of believers trying to tie the yoke of the Law to the necks of new Gentile believers. I thought of the apostle Peter telling the council at Jerusalem not to add the burden of the Law to believers. I thought of the apostle Paul writing to new believers about who they had once been and about the hope of who they could become through the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. I thought of him writing to these new believers that they had been adopted forever and always into the family of God through the work of Christ.

And I thought of my own life. Because I too have been adopted into God’s family. I too have been set free from the yoke of the Law and the bondage of slavery to sin. And those words of my daughter echoed in my mind: “Me not go back there.” Because, just like the Israelites, I so often forget what the Lord has done for me. I so often look behind me at what once was rather than looking forward at the finished work of Christ. I often look behind me at who I was before Christ rather than looking forward to the work of sanctification that he desires to perform within me. I so often get bogged down looking at the sin in my life that I go back to over, and over, and over again.

We are often quick to idealize what once was. We are quick to forget the reality of the past in the struggles of the present. Our hearts are restless and prone to wander. It is easy to fall into the trap of looking back with longing gaze at what was rather than pressing forward to what lies ahead. Yet we are called to leave the old behind and run with perseverance the race set before us.

My daughter viewed her past experiences in that place as a time of hardship and difficulty. She had no desire to return there but was thankful for the new life that she had with us. Likewise, I need to leave the past behind. So I pray that those powerful words spoken by my daughter about her past will be echoed in my own spiritual life. I pray that I will never take my new life for granted. I pray for the grace and the strength to forget what lies behind and to press forward to what lies ahead.