Yesterday is a Memory, Tomorrow a Mirage

A Blessing for Loving What Is (instead of what could have been)

by Kate Bowler in Good Enough: 40ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection.

Blessed are you who are attempting to love what is here, what is now. You who recognize the wonder and pain looking at life’s rearview mirror, at those things that are gone.

The person you were. The quickness and sharpness of a body that didn’t tire as quickly. The relationships and jobs and aspirations. The people you can’t get back.

Blessed are you, holding the gentle compassion that wraps memories in grace.

And blessed are you, turning your gaze from imagined futures that seem to call out with an unnecessary pressure and an urgency that wants to rob you of what joys still exist.

And oh how blessed are you, drawing a tidy boundary around today and calling it home. For yesterday is a memory, tomorrow a mirage.

Blessed are you, recognizing that the rightsizing of reach and possibility is the heart’s ease of God’s good counsel. Opening your eyes to all that is here. Let its beauty seep into your pores and whisper words of peace.

Receive and welcome reality in its completeness, giving over to God all that is beyond your power to change or understand or return to once again.

And in the meantime, embracing and loving the life you have, the family you have, the pleasures that are yours. Right now.