I ran into my friend Mark last Sunday and asked him how his week was going.
“Fantastic!” he said. “It just started!”
YOU GUYS. The week just started. I had not thought of this.
I was thinking about the week that just ended, and the days we’d slogged through, and all the things that kind-of-worked-but-not-really. I was thinking about old worries and new developments and the things I can control and the things I can’t.
I was thinking of long nights and tired mornings and the fact that everyone expects to eat meals again today, which means we have to make meals again today. And again tomorrow. These are the easy things, and even easy things are hard.
A short list of things that regularly derail my days:
- Three-year-old Evelyn wakes up cranky for no reason
- Or I do
- Anyone gets sick
- Everyone gets sick
- One of the kids has some kind of project deadline
- Or I do
- Laundry
- Weather-induced boredom
- Weather-induced excitement to Go Do Something
- Realizing we have no dinner plan and an unlikely selection of ingredients (what do I do with frozen peas, leftover oatmeal, and three cans of beans?)
- Visitors stopping by
- Any one of a million other factors
- Etc.
And then I am a train spinning its wheels and getting nowhere. That’s what derailed means. Overturned, broken down, all motion and no progress. GREAT.
I was carrying all that with me into the next day.
I was carrying all of last week’s garbage into this week, and I wasn’t setting any of it down.
BUT OH. RIGHT. You guys, the week just started. Today just started. This minute, it just started. Who knows what this one will bring!
Today we begin again. Every day we begin again.
Yes, your past matters—but maybe not as much as it would like you to think. You are always being made new, and this new day/week/breath is reminding you.
Yesterday will influence today. Yes, of course. The things that happened then keep happening now, and the things that came before color how we see what comes next.
But yesterday doesn’t get to define today.
Today is its own thing. This week is a new week. It has a beginning, it has an end, and we get to live in this one, right where we are. Be here now. OH RIGHT. AGAIN.
So how was last week? And how is this one so far? And how will the next one be? They’re related, but they’re not the same. They each get to have their own answer.
How’s your day? It’s just getting started.
How’s your week? It’s just getting started.
How are you?
YOU’RE JUST GETTING STARTED.
Here. We. Go.
