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Leaving Yesterday Behind


There are some days that my attitude and emotions feel like they are in the same disease category as arthritis. When the weather changes and a new season is coming in I am reminded of old memories: the smell of fresh cut grass in the spring, and wood smoke of fall bonfires, a warm breeze after a long winter...it all brings back a flood of memories that won't go away. You say...what's wrong with memories? Nothing, unless you let them control your thoughts. I've lived in the country with all of these smells and hundreds more for 22 years of my life only to be uprooted and taken to a stinky, smoggy, dark city. As fall comes around so does my "arthritis" of memories. As the holidays approach I wonder what traditions I will have to give up and what new ones I will be asked to embrace?
Memories are one of the sweetest things about life. Some people only remember the good and others only the bad. Memories are all about the time you've spent doing the things you love, or pushing through the rough times, they have taught many lessons, lessons we should never forget,  but to dwell on the past wishing today away will harm your life more than you can imagine. It is the fastest way to make yourself discontent and unhappy with any situation you are in. Just this weekend I allowed myself to have a walk down memory lane and almost lost the joy of two or three days. I had just spent a beautiful weekend at my parents with my husband, relaxing and enjoying a fall weekend to the fullest doing many things that we used to do as a family when I was younger. Starting on Sunday afternoon not long before we were supposed to leave, I fell into a memory lane epidemic thinking of what it used to be like, how it will never be that way again, and how my life is so different than this beautiful weekend. I grumped, I pouted, I got mad at the world, my husband, and life for not being the way I wanted it to be. I lost 2 1/2 days to pouting about the past, a past that I have glorified in my mind, forgetting every bad moment and seizing every possible lovely thing and magnifying beyond it's normal size.
Once again I must run to the Word of God to pull me away from my pity party.

 Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. (Phil: 3:13-14)

Today is the day that God wants me to live - not yesterday. He has so many things in store for me today, but I think He probably had to reschedule some events and take some away because I used up too much time in yesterday - in a day that can't be changed. I can work on creating the atmosphere that my parents did for me, for my children.  No one wants to live in someone else's past, but I'm sure they would love to share in the sweet memories and traditions of the past.
What does today hold for me? How can I make today sweet and wonderful? Can I add an element of my past, or think of something new and wonderful to add? My day is what I make it...and I resolve to make today a day I think back on as a good memory because I lived out today (not yesterday) to its fullest.

Sarah
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