The Best is Always Yet to Be

Memories, if we can appreciate time as it was, and not long for what has passed, are a beautiful thing. Often as I am going about a task a funny saying of my father’s or toddler Maggie Lee’s and baby Jack’s will echo in my mind and make me laugh.

I. Love. Toddlers. So much. They are tiny little people kits coming together. Every day is a brand new world for them and spectating this is superbly entertaining. Sometimes when incorporating a new thought or word a sentence looks like a janky Mr. Potato Head with a nose where the eyes belong and an ear for an arm. And that verbal modern art is spectacular.

One Sunday many years ago when searching for a sandal in Maggie Lee’s closet floor I was beginning to get impatient. If anyone is going to throw up or lose a shoe it will be as one is trying to get to church. Because Satan. Rifling through the underbelly of the closet and mumbling rhetorical statements like “Where could it be?” Maggie Lee looked up earnestly and said, “A mystewy took it.” Oh, mystery, you thief.

I remember certain phrases which still make me laugh. We were flying to Orlando when the kids were five and three. Coming from Coach, restroom-bound, Jack and I walked through First Class as they were enjoying their bacon and eggs. He noticed the lavish breakfast trays and asked me, “How come we don’t got no eggs?”

Memories are meant to bless us. We can let them cripple us and convince us that our present will never compare. The funny thing is that once we subscribe to the narrative that life will never be as good as it was, it will not be. What we focus on grows and the past while we can appreciate it, is a finished chapter. Any farmer who reminisces instead of planting knows this. It is no sign of devotion for one to crumble because an era in life is over. It is a sign of self-pity.

We have every resource of Heaven behind us when we choose joy, even in the darkness. The decision to live life to the fullest (John 10:10) is to accept the life Christ died to provide, even in the valley. If there are lessons the cross teaches, they are that there is no length God will not go to love us and that love brings about a future hope that is better than any past we had.

It may be a beautiful mystewy but the best is yet to be!

#faith

#regret

#Christian

#Christianjoy

#toddlers

#Mom

#parent

#unconditionallove

#Godslove

#peace

#Holyweek

#Christ’slove