Though our outer man is progressively decaying and wasting away, yet our inner self is being, progressively, renewed day after day. 2 Cor 4:16 (AMP)

PART 4 – New Day

Go to  PART 1  | PART 2  |  PART 3

At age 26 I was diagnosed with depression, glandular fever, and clinical burnout. (Fun times… haha!) I asked my Psychologist how long it would take me to recover. For the first year, she said, I’ll have to get up in the morning, look in the mirror and tell myself that I am OK, I am valued and I can do this. It would be more of a ‘convincing’ at first than a telling. Then the year after that, I may only have to convince myself of it every 2nd day. And the year after that, every third… and so on. Then she said, “But you will recover. And each day will bring you closer to wholeness.”

I was looking for that “new day” get well, quick healing day. The one where I go to sleep a frog and I wake up a princess.

But it didn’t happen like that.

It took about as long as she said. A few years of daily, often moment by moment, battling dark thoughts and exhaustion and physical stress. Even now, I still have those little conversations with myself. Not as often, but from time to time my reflection gets a good talking to… from me.

Each day is a new day. Never seen before, never to be seen again. Yet, we carry the dust of yesterday into each new day while tomorrow haunts and taunts some and promises hope for others.

But we seem to find comfort and hope in the idea of the sun setting on one day and rising to a brand new one.

Through my experiences with mental and physical illness, I’ve come to value the overcoming nature of endurance and time. Sudden change rarely happens for the better. Most efforts to increase, grow, overcome, heal, move forward, find peace and more, happen day-by-day-by-day-by-day… and then more days stacked on top of that.

So while I look forward to clean, fresh new days, it’s no use putting my hope in the ’newness’ of the day to change my situation. It doesn’t take too many breaths from waking up for the day to be tarnished anyway.

For me, a new day represents another chance, another moment to hope, renewed strength, a rested body, breakfast… It tells me that I had time to regroup and regather through the night, adjust my vision and enjoy the grace of sleep. The new day set before my aging life and my heart full of history promises me that it's not over yet, there is more grace to unwrap and unfold over my life. There’s time to say what needs to be said, forgive what needs forgiving and to walk the pain and suffering closer to wholeness.

Every new day is like a giant ‘AND' instead of a ‘PERIOD' (or ‘full-stop' for my fellow Aussies).

Hellen Keller said,

“All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.”

No matter what you’re facing, each new day is here to walk you closer to restoration, joy, and healing. Just keep on going. Don’t let the pain or fear of yesterday waste the progress grace can make today.

Go to PART 5 – Eternal Things

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