“And I’ll take with me the memories to be my sunshine after the rain.
It’s so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.”
It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye, Boyz II Men
In the beginning…
Our oldest just turned 18. In just over a week, he will turn a tassel from one side of cardboard cap to the other. Capsulated in that one moment is marker of life called graduation. It is the end of era called high school. One we celebrate and honor.
As we walk this process of a page turning in his life, I reflect on previous chapters of my own. Some I enjoy re-reading, others I would like to burn in the bonfire of forgetfulness. If there is a lesson I have learned is that often yesterday becomes better than the day it actually happened.
Fish get bigger.
Home runs hit further.
Friends closer.
Moments more significant than they actually were.
I shared something that at the moment seemed mean or even harsh to my eldest about the events of next Thursday night. I said this “at the end of the ceremony, you will not feel any different.”
All the pomp and circumstance is good fanfare for the moment. I believe we should celebrate moments. But the moment is just that. The next day he will wake up a high school graduate, just like millions of other people. That high school diploma really only does one thing, it allows him to wake up the next day and live that day.
To all the grads, to all the glory days remembers of way back when, to all the people who look so fondly at yesterday or yesteryear…live today!!
In the book of Isaiah, the prophet lays out a beautiful memory for the people of Israel. Telling tales of how God parted the Red Sea, retells of walls of water held back so the people can pass on dry ground. The prophet reminds the people of great big God who crushed the enemy, setting them free from their captures.
Then in a shift says “forget the former things.”
Hold up Isaiah. You painted a Bob Ross happy clouds picture of how good God was to tell them to forget about it?
Yes.
In the end…
Too often we look back so fondly we forget to look where we are. Often we remember yesterday so well, we fail to make a memory today. So often we romanticize what we had, where we were, and who God was and miss the very new thing God wants to do.
The very next statement Isaiah makes on behalf of that Red Sea parting God is “I am about to do a new thing.”
Often our perfectly painted memory creates dark clouds over the current reality. How good life once was prevents us from seeing the breaking rays of life in our current moment.
For my oldest, life and God have new things for him. Things no longer called high school. What all of us as grads or dads, students or sons, have to keep in mind is that just because the past was good does not mean the present is not better.
So to all the grads from 2019 or 1999 or 1979…I will pay homage to my beloved Boyz II Men that it is hard to say goodbye to yesterday, but we have to do it. Let yesterday lie where it is, live in the present. Live in today. Make the most of this moment. Make a memory in this situation and setting. Because God tells us his mercies are new every morning.
Today, there are new mercies and new memories. Today, there is new sunrise and new blessings.
Live in the present and say goodbye to yesterday!
