Ah, that moment. You know the one. When you lean down to take a big whiff of those memory-laden roses, and you’re slapped in the face with a gruesome and unfriendly scent. You’re immediately tossed into one of two responses. One response is to rush to the cabinet and grab the plastic wrap. These flowers are going to stay on your table until the day you die. Even if you have to quarantine your table, they will decompose there.

Or, the moment the first stem turns a tad limp, you grab those flowers up and start nailing them to any breezeless area in your house. Spray them with dust protectant and artificial rose scent, and then begin guard duty. Taser and remote for you. Shock collars for the rest of the unsuspecting souls who creep unknowingly in your crazed presence.

Crazy? Sure. But what if we were to replace the “flowers” with our past? Memories of old habits, music, places. All of these could be beautiful like music that reminds you of a special time or reignites a feeling you carried at one point. Or it could be a place you graced during a season in your life.

None of these are bad things. In fact memories are incredible things. But what happens when our memories are the very things that hinder us from moving forward?

Why is it I continuously attempt to listen to that band that brings all these memories? Not bad, but just enough to keep that wound open and slightly raw. This isn’t a confessional. It’s more of a “V8″ moment. What am I doing? Better yet, why?

Why do we enjoy torturing ourselves with things of old when we claim to be moving forward? The Bible puts it like this in Matthew 9:17, “Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved” (NKJV).

We say we want a new start—to change the way we do things. We want people to see us differently, but can we handle this newness? Are we ready and capable of holding this “new wine?”

If so, then why have we “preserved” our memories? Hung them in random places in our lives. Protected them. Defended them. Sprayed them to keep them fresh.

If we truly want to move forward, we must separate ourselves from the things that are wearing us out.

For me, this could come as easy as deleting a band from my iTunes. For you, maybe it’s a newsfeed you can’t seem to hide, or a picture that randomly appears on your computer screen.

Let’s be done with this moldy, fragile bag. Let’s toss the crunchy, plastic wrapped flowers of our past and reach for the new wineskins. Let’s move on.

Olivia Dummer is a student in Blue Springs, Missouri where Steve Smith is her pastor. She writes and keeps an inspirational blog hoping to encourage others and share what she’s learned about God.