I just heard a quote by Wayne Gretzky – “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”

I love that.  It’s applicable to so many areas of life.  Looking forward instead of looking back.  Learning from the past, but heading to the future.

I’m not sure if Paul ever played hockey, but he had the same idea when he wrote his letter to the Philippians – Philippians 3:13 – No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead…

Again in his letter to the Corinthians, Paul says, “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” 2 Corinthians 5:17.  

How many of us are held back by our pasts?  We think that we are beyond forgiveness and a fresh start, or we simply believe that we can’t change.  That we are stuck in a pattern of failure.  We keep looking back over our shoulders at what once was, what we think defines us, and not looking ahead, we trip and fall once again. Maybe we haven’t even set a goal of change for ourselves.  Maybe we are caught in the trap of the definition of insanity – doing the same old thing, expecting different results.

But what if we have no direction?  How on earth can we get to where we want to go (the puck heading to the goal) if we don’t even know where we want to go?  It would be like standing out in the middle of the ice rink, hockey stick in hand, looking at the puck flying around with no idea or intention of hitting it toward that net where points are scored and the win happens.  Just standing there letting the game happen without your involvement or interaction or input.

This applies to every area of our lives from our personal goals, our physical goals, our intellectual goals, our social goals, our spiritual goals.   “Forgetting the past (failures) and looking forward to what is ahead…” Aiming for the win.

When I was a little girl, I had a very strict piano teacher.  Actually, she scared me to death.  She would stand over me at my lessons, pick at my form and the length of my fingernails, wait for me to make a mistake and then pounce on me for it.  Because of that, I never learned to just enjoy playing the piano.  I never learned to accompany other people, because I was so sure that I would make a mistake.   It stunted my growth as a pianist.  I got stuck.

One day, I literally got stuck.  We had a recital.  No sheet music was allowed.  I was terrified.  Everything from memory, with my teacher standing at the back of the church, listening, waiting for a mistake.  As I went to the piano and introduced my piece, I began shaking.  Not just little, subtle tremors.  Full on trembling that made my fingers so weak that I couldn’t even press the keys hard enough to make a sound.  Somehow, I got through the first few measures and then it happened.  I froze.  I knew I was a failure from the beginning.  All those mistakes at lessons.  Who was I to think I could play the piano, any way?  As I sat there, I could not think of one single note to play the rest of the song.  Nothing.

From the back of the room, I heard my teacher shout, “Just go to the next part.”  Normally, that would be good advice.  But I couldn’t remember the next part.  I couldn’t get past the fact that I had just failed so miserably in a room full of people.  I could only dwell on the past. The future was not even in my line of vision.

Defeated, I got up from the piano and walked back to my seat where I cried inconsolably.  Mortified.  Humiliated.  And deeply disappointed with myself.

Unfortunately, I never really got over that in my piano playing.  I let the pain of the past determine my future.  Sad, I know.  But it has proven to be a lesson for me in other, more important areas of my life.  Past performance does not have to dictate future success.  It’s my choice.

Wayne Gretzky didn’t waste his time in games thinking about where the puck had been, what he could have done differently.  He focused on where the puck was going to go, where he wanted it to go, and then made sure he was there to make contact with it to guide it to the goal.

Where do you want to go today?