Are you still digging up things that are over and done? Do you keep chasing after "bones of contention"? Holding grudges is not going to help you move forward to happiness. Being an "emotional paleontologist" will result in a handful of useless bones. Not much use, because no museum will pay you the big bucks they pay for dinosaur bones. Give up the grudges. Stop digging around for those bones of contention. Let the dino-diggers worry about paleontology. Your concern is to look ahead, to move forward, to build your own happiness and that of those around you. Here are some helpful words on this subject by Rev. Bennett Wayne Dean:

Many of you may be familiar with the song “Digging Up Bones” sung by Randy Travis. It was quite popular in the late eighties, as I recall, and gets continued exposure on the radio and in old Matlock reruns. What’s Randy Travis singing about? He’s sitting all alone “digging up bones.” Doesn’t sound like he’s having much fun does it? “Exhuming things that’s better left alone.” Sounds like a depressing evening. “Resurrecting memories of a love that’s dead and gone.” Well, haven’t we all done the same thing more than once — probably many, many times? Oh, we may not have done exactly the same thing — sitting alone at home “digging up bones”, but we’ve all been guilty of “digging up bones” — of “exhuming things that’s better left alone.” Be honest, now. We’ve all done it.

A man comes home after having an unusually hard day at work and the first thing he hears from his wife is, “You went off and left your dirty cereal dish on the table this morning. I’m sick and tired of picking up after you!” And what does the man say? “Well, when I got up I had to pour out a half-full glass of curdled milk you left on the coffee table and didn’t take care of after you finished watching David Letterman last night. And there was one of those biting flies buzzing around it.” To which the lady responds, “Well, if I hadn’t been distracted by having go and turn off the porch light that you forgot, I would have remembered to take care of the milk.” And then he says, “Well, two weeks ago I got home from working the graveyard shift and every light in the house was on — and you were still asleep! The children were late for school.” Before this lively discussion reaches its unpleasant ending, the entire problem has been blamed on a visit by Aunt Bessie in 1978 and the shaggy dog that the husband had when the couple first got married — depending upon which one of the participants you asked, of course. Sound familiar?

What has just happened here? This couple was “digging up bones.” They were “exhuming things that’s better left alone.” The fact that the children were late for school two weeks ago didn’t have anything to do with the dirty cereal bowl being left on the table. And the fact that Buster the dog shed hair all over the new carpet in the late sixties didn’t make Aunt Bessie stay an extra two weeks in ‘78. No, the couple just started “digging up bones.” We all do it. We shouldn’t, but we do.

Or, how about this. A child comes home from school with his report card and Mom says, “How could you have made a “C” in math. Both your sisters made “A’s” when they were in Miss Matthew’s class. If you don’t start working harder, you’ll make another “D” like you did in the second grade. I told your father then you shouldn’t be playing t-ball, but he wouldn’t listen.” The child replies, “But Mom, that was 8 years ago." To which Mom says, “It’s the same thing starting all over. You are just not taking any responsibility anymore. Monday, I asked you to stop at the store on your way home and pick up a loaf of bread and you forgot. Now this report card. When your father gets home, I think we better discuss taking you out of that band you’re in — if you can’t do any better than this.” What has Mom done? That’s right. Mom’s digging up bones.

I’m reminded of a story I read about a young boy who had grown up in a rural setting a hundred years ago. Most of the year this young boy had drifted carelessly along, not putting much effort in his school work. But in midwinter some kind words from his teacher roused him to take a new start and he became a different boy and begin making up for past faults in his work. At the final examination he passed with a high grade to the great joy and pride of his mother and father.

At year end the parents were present for the graduation ceremony to the next grade. But the copy-books used during the year were all laid out on a table for the visitors to look at; and the boy remembered that his copy-book, well done in its latter pages, had been a dreary mass of blots and bad work before. He watched his mother as she began looking over those books and his heart was sick at the disappointment she was about to feel when she saw the poor work he had done in the past. But to the boy’s great surprise, she seemed quite pleased with what she saw and called his father to look with her. Afterward the young boy rushed over to the table and found that his teacher had thoughtfully and thoroughly torn out all those bad, blotted pages and made his copybooks begin from the point where he had started to do better.

How many times have we said — or if we haven’t actually said it, we’ve thought it — “Well I can forgive him, but I sure can’t forget what he’s done.” And what do most of us do? That’s right! We start “digging up bones.” We start “exhuming things that’s better left alone.” The person who we feel has wronged us isn’t present to hear our “digging”, but we, like the man in Randy’s Travis’ song, will sit alone at home or in some bar “digging up bones.”

On the other hand, there's AGAPE LOVE — a form of love which is both unconditional and volitional. That is, it is non-discriminating with no preconditions and is something that one CHOOSES to do. This type of humanitarian kindness is what we should, ideally, strive to show to all of our fellow men and women all of the time — regardless of what they have, or have not done to us ... for us ... with us ... or without us — rather than “digging up bones” when someone falls short of PERFECTION.

~Excerpted from an article by
Reverend Bennett Wayne Dean Sr., Alabama, 1997