Yesterday.
Yesterday, as my childhood hero Anne Shirley would say, was my proverbial Jonah Day.
Yesterday, the sunshine made me feel empty. The clouds were moving past me. The moments were evading me.
Yesterday my morning coffee tasted bitter. It didn’t matter that I was able to sleep in until the sunrise. It wasn’t satisfying.
Yesterday I was disgusted with the winter season. I was tired of it trying to look beautiful, when deep down I knew it was tired too. Everything was bare.
Yesterday I played Hamlet in the stage of My Life, wary of the world and everything in it. Surely it was out to get me. Surely I was entitled to a little teen-aged Funk now and then. Surely everyone would prefer if I kept myself to my corner, away from the innocent public who might catch my retro-Emo, contemplative attitude.
Yesterday wasn’t even a bad day. But I was lethargic, and unmotivated – and in my life of ambition and drive and passion… that’s almost worse.
It was awful. And I hated it. But the more I hated it, the more I felt trapped in it, stuck in a never-ending row of falsified Yesterdays.
Yesterday. (pause). Yesterday. (pause). Yesterday….
It’s a taunting echo, but somehow… slowly… it shifts its shape from shameful mockery to whispered hymnal (or Beetles tune, if you’re more inclined).
Yesterday. It was yesterday. But today, is Today. And I’m so very, very glad.
Because Yesterday is a messy page of scratches, off-centre doodles, and ripped corners from trying to erase too hard. But it’s delightful, because it’s yesterday, and it’s one more step to Tomorrow.
But I’ve heard this before. I’ve written this before. The tune is oh-so-familiar, in a collage of Spilled Milk, Unfamiliar Seasons, and Tuesdays.
It seems like every time I sit down and try to write something new, I keep playing back the same track on repeat. Apparently I have a one-hit wonder that revolves around forgiveness, starting fresh, and waking up to a brand new day each morning, coffee in hand and lightness of heart. Rough day, deep breath, start over, repeat.
And yet… every time the song comes back on, it’s just as startling and encouraging as the first time I heard it. And every time He speaks the usual story, He gives an entirely new perspective, as though I’m learning to speak the same message in a myriad of languages… because everyone knows that when you try to translate that one, perfect word… you just can’t. It just… is.
So I’m back on the same lesson, sometimes in the same room as Yesterday. But I can slowly feel the message getting deeper, beneath my fingers, digging into the innermost parts of my heart.
And there, one day, I shall hear the tongues of angels. And I will find the perfect word.
