“How’s it going? – A New Year? A New Day?” – question asked.
“Oh the same old, same old,” comes the cliched same old answer.
And it sounds so glass-half empty – so not new – so already faltering outside the New Year gate.
Sometimes, even on a shiny New Year day, that’s how I feel.
Laundry still piled up. Hungry mouths to feed. Teens still angsting – just maybe over different things. Trying to grow where I’m planted, though I find myself sometimes surprised about exactly where I am.
There’s a lot of same old, same old in my life. Maybe it’s because of 30 years and 5 boys – the same old challenges the have revealed themselves as stages – over and over again.
The same old conversations – about grades, reading lists, math problems not worked out, homework due. So far I’ve said 3X around senior year that gifts God gives you, that give you a head-start in success – takes you so far and then your work ethic takes you the rest of the way – conscious effort. The same old conversation about dating, “Have you prayed about it?”
The same old, same old is also the wait of the journey of a prayer sent out. . . .and individual bloom time.
The same old, same old me battling the little and big battles of who I am – with all my God-designed strengths and weaknesses, hobbled by careful and uncareful hands in the living.
The same old learning to believe – really believe, though – that He’s got the plan, that the right answer to a prayer sent out – well, He’s really taking care of it the right way – better than my way, that the sky is not really falling in – both inside and outside of me – because I’m imperfect and I got on my boys unfairly today and all those missed-it seeds I planted in my imperfection – aren’t going to overshadow the good seeds, the love and mercy seeds planted and prayed into them.
I might be living in a same old, same old 24/7 world – but I am learning to live it with a mercies-renewed-each-morning attitude. Not like a one-time gift that we have to make last – with crazy glue and duct tape – but His mercies that a bright, shining new, fully operational and charge, nothing broken or wobbled – waiting for me to open and color my world inside and out.
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness (Lamentations 3:22-23)
In His mercy, He whispers to me in the sunrise, whispering covenant promises, promises of a forever love, a forever relationship: the same promises, the same mercies He gave David, “Listen to me. Come with me – and your soul shall live” (Isaiah 55:3).
Every morning in the same old, same old beginning of the daily, I wake to this kind of love offered to me, as the sun breaks the darkness, “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31:3).
In His mercy, He meets me, love pulling me into the day, forgiveness ready, gracious and merciful, no morning grumpies but slow to anger, so abundantly kind. He never forgets. He’s always there, even when I’m not. He is not careless of me. (Neh 9:17b).
In His mercy, Long-suffering with my foibles, my gracelessness, He waits patiently – the clock doesn’t faze Him. That sometimes I don’t get it – or get it quick enough. He knows
what I cannot do – and knows the depth of what I can do – beyond what I know I can – He knows because he made me.
In His mercy, He leads me out of the bondage of brokenness and sin, bondage to fear of failure, just like He did to the children of Israel. He knows the stages of freedom from bondage, how long, sometimes, it takes for patterns of behavior to be broken.
In His mercy, He heard my cries to Him, to save my sons and He has. He saved my 4th son’s physical life the day he was born, saved the second’s soul in the tragedy of a rescue mission – just like He saved Noah, just like He saved the widow’s son.
In His mercy, like the shepherd whose sheep strays off, He pursues until found. He also knows it takes some sheep longer to hear the sound of His voice. Like the prodigal, He knows the rebel must take the hard road of poor choices in order to value the road to His home – to the arms of unconditional love and forgiveness.
In His mercy, He listens to the sobbing song of a mother’s prayer.
“Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not” (Lam 3:22).
Because of His mercies, this mother’s heart is not consumed like dried-out twigs in a fire run wild.
In His mercy, He replaces lenses that saw me made all wrong, inside and out – replaced my lenses with His to see His design and how all the parts inside and out went together just right.
In His mercy, He blessed my eyes that they may see Him and the world through Him, and my ears – that they would filter what I heard through Him – and that through Him, the hurtful, biting words of life would just slide off.
In His Mercy, I have found to read the messages He sends me in the daily: in the cardinal shooting out ahead, in the leaves swirling in a wind, in the running rivulets of an afternoon storm.
In His mercy, I have found the sweet spot in the wait of prayer’s journey.
In His Mercy, I have found the glass that is life in the same old, same old overflowing.
Praying that everyday, you and I – that we live over-flowing in the same old same old.
WHERE CAN YOU FIND HIS MERCIES NEW IN THE SAME OLD OF YOUR LIFE?
By: Maryleigh Bucher
I am a wife of 29 years, a mom of 5 sons ranging in ages from 26 to 11. I am a Christian woman raising sons to be strong, manly men who love God and show the love of Jesus Christ to others through their words and actions. I am an encourager. I am a mother constantly seeking solutions to challenges. I am a cook seeking the perfect homemade white cake recipe. I am going to smoke a pipe with vanilla tobacco when I am 80 years old. I am planter of the flowers. I am washer of The Blue Cotton Blanket. I never give up. I love that words mean something. I am blessed. I am Maryleigh of Blue Cotton Memory.
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REGISTER NOW for the
2014 M.O.M. Conference ~ BETTER TOGETHER
July 31st – August 2nd,
Jacksonville, Florida at Trinity Baptist Church
Registration Information, Location, List of Breakout Sessions, Descriptions of Workshops, Conference Speaking Team, Better Together Conference Flyer, Better Together Bulletin Insert (Full Color), Better Together Bulletin Insert (Black & White), Better Together Conference Cards (Postcard Size)
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