"I need to write in my blog, but I've got nothing to say." The words had no sooner left my mouth than I heard this coming from the television - "Do NOT let your yesterdays define the rest of your life." The thought was being expressed by a very tall, very fashionable and very pretty African-American woman who was singing during the end of this gospel music awards show. I was waiting on the Tech/Wake Forest basketball game but it turned out this lady had much more to offer than YET ANOTHER "L" for my Jackets'.
That really is what's holding me down. It really is what's keeping me "HERE." Yesterday. Yesterday was a lot of bad decisions. Yesterday was a lot of bad self-esteem. Yesterday was projects started and not finished. Yesterday was relationships that either should have never started or ran a bad course once they were started. But damn it all , YESTERDAY IS OVER. Not sure why I can't get that through my thick skull.
I tell my bride constantly that if I and I alone were going through current struggles I wouldn't give a darn at all. They'd be water off a duck's back. But I stood there in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee and asked her dad for permission to marry her and while doing so I promised I'd take care of her. Watching her sitting and racking her brain trying to figure out how to make ends meet is not taking care of her. And every time I see that scenario playing out I think "If only I'd done things differently. If only I'd made more of myself she'd be living instead of struggling." But then I realize the greatest quandary of all - if I HAD finished this or tried that or moved here and followed that dream...I never would've met her. And, at the risk of becoming a living Hallmark moment, I really can't see the point of right now and tomorrow if she's not in it.
So I'm back to not letting yesterday define anything about today. All that matters now is the opportunity to make today and everyday from here on out better. I cannot let what's done and gone become an albatross on our lives. And, bless her heart, she knows it - she tells me this all the time. See, when we first started dating many years ago, she often scolded me for anticipating her behavior based on the behavior of former "Love Interests" (ain't that what the tabloid types call them these days? I generally call them bullets I've dodged!) Now she tells me I'm letting different aspects of my "old life" cloud every single day we have together. Things like the bad decisions and the years spent obese and unhealthy...I still live in fear of them, even if in the abstract since they're no longer around.
So my thanks to the lady on the gospel music awards the other night....you've got me to thinking...........
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