Each ‘New Year ‘  I make a list of goals for the coming year.  Resolutions if you will.  In past years I often start off great but within a short amount of time I miss a day or fall behind.  Guilt sets in and then it can be all downhill from there.  Occasionally, the beginning of a new month will spark the resolution a new, after all it is a new month with no mistakes in it yet.  Sometimes things get checked off the list and other times the year comes to the end and I find myself making a new list for the coming year and I just add the unaccomplished goals into the coming year’s list.

We have all heard the saying, “You Only Live Once.”  Often used as an excuse to eat that extra piece of cheesecake, perhaps do something reckless, or to be frivolous. Recently I have seen the opposite phrase floating around online.  “You Live Everyday.  You Only Die Once.”  I have had that rolling around in my head over the last few weeks.  This year, when the inevitable happened and I did not keep my crazy New Year’s List,  I was not hit with guilt.  

Truth is if I am not happy with the way things are today, I am not stuck in this rut.  I do not have to wait for a brand new month or year to make a fresh start.  You Live Everyday.  Everyday we have the chance to change.  We have the opportunity to turn over a new leaf and have a fresh start.  We can pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off and start over.

A few verses come to mind too as I have had this phrase banging around in my head.

“So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten…” ~Joel 2:25

Perhaps an odd sounding verse, some of the locusts our family has lived through were, Dave being downsized and out of work (twice), brain cancer, and even me.  I have been the locust at times I have let things distract me from what is most important, I have been lazy, or overwhelmed and wasted time worrying.  Yet with God anything is possible, and the years the locust ate can be restored.  Nothing is ever too late for God, He can work in any situation.

“I waited patiently for the Lord;
And He inclined to me,
And heard my cry.
He also brought me up out of a horrible pit,
Out of the miry clay,
And set my feet upon a rock,
And established my steps.
He has put a new song in my mouth—
Praise to our God…”  ~Psalm 40: 1-3

We can be in any situation and God can pull us out of it and dust us off, put us on solid ground and my favourite part give us a NEW SONG!!!  We don’t have to keep the old negative narrative going through our heads.  We don’t have to beat ourselves up, we can take on His NEW SONG for us.

WE LIVE EACH DAY!!  How will you live this extraordinary life that has been gifted to you.  Yes, it is your one and only life, but with it each day brings you a fresh new start.  I am choosing to not let the things that in the past have filled me with guilt and caused me to become stuck in one spot.  I am embracing each new moment.  If my day started off pathetically slow because my wee one kept me up all night I don’t have to write off the whole day as a loss.  Sure I might not accomplish everything I had planned, but this is still a day to choose to sing out my new song.  We LIVE everyday!