Yearning Day 4: Yesterdays

Day 4. Yearning Prayer: All My Yesterdays

    Do you know people who yearn for yesterday. Whether they long for a do-over or even several do-overs, or those who harbor those dreaded “if onlys”(If only this would have happened or if only I would have done that) or those who rest on their laurels and say, “Back in the day…” and boast of what they used to do.

     The only time I want to say “I’ve done my time” is on my tombstone. The Psalmist in chapter 42 is remembering his past and longing for days gone by. A prayerful heart that yearns for God doesn’t linger in the past.

⁴ When I remember these things, I pour out my soul within me. For I used to go with the multitude; I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept a pilgrim feast.

     My aunt always used to say she never wished to go back to any previous era. She always lived in the present with a watchful eye for tomorrow. Now in her 80s, with failing health and aching joints, she still has a ready smile, a warming laugh and an encouraging word.

     I wondered whether if she still felt the same way so I picked up the phone to call her. I’ve had her number memorized since I was a kid, and it is, in fact, a land-line. There’s so many family members on the other side of eternity whom I can no longer call, my heart was warmed she is still there.

    “Hi Bessie, this is Timmy,” (at 52, I’ll still identify myself that way to the older family members, even though I haven’t gone by that since I was in the seventh grade). I hear the real bell from her phone echoing throughout her house, the same sound now imitated by so many ring tones. “How are you doing?”

     “Pretty good to be as old as I am.”

    After a few pleasantries, I asked her if she still felt the same way about not wanting to go back. She laughed and said that yes, it was still true. “There’s just never been a time when it was so bad in the present that I wanted to go back to the past,” she said.

     Not that she didn’t have bad times. Born in the depression, she lived through World War II. Early in their marriage, her husband left his newlywed bride to serve in the Korean War. Always a long tall bean pole, he now can’t stop losing weight and the doctors don’t know why. She’s been to her fair share of funerals. After my father (her brother) died and eight years later, my mother died, my aunt and uncle took us three orphaned kids in to live with them and their two kids. For a short while she had five teenagers living in her house, God bless her.

    Yes, she said, even today, she says she doesn’t look back, enjoys today and still looks forward to tomorrow even if all that is washing her hair or checking the rain gauge. And after that, on to heaven.

    There are those who yearn for the past, and then there are those who wish to erase the painful memories of the past, and yet the past navigates their present even more than those who wish for their glory days to return.

     When you pray, thank God for the past. Ask for healing from the pain. But remember that the wake of a boat on a lake does not determine where the boat is going, but only shows where it has been. So too should our past be an indicator of where we've been, not a dictator of where we are to go.