Not Just Another Day on the Calendar

Dates and memory have a special connection in our minds. I'm not talking about the fruit or an evening out with your significant other, but dates on a calendar.  We mark the passing of various events in our life on the calendars of our minds, and give specific dates significance.  Families celebrate birthdays and anniversaries each year on a particular date.  Most nations have particular dates that are considered holidays, nationally acknowledged with parades and fireworks and flags flying high. We mark dates on our calendars with big red circles when certain things we are looking forward to will happen: graduations, big trips, new jobs, etc.  Recovering addicts  have a date of sobriety that marks a milestone each time it circles around, celebrating another sober year.  I think there is great value in celebrating the accomplishments and joyous occasions of your life year after year.  

I also know, that some dates on the calendar mark times of grief, loss, and sadness.  Those dates come around each year brining back the pain and hurt of times gone by. Instead of the bright red circle, they often sit blank on our physical calendars, but on the calendar of our hearts they are marked with a giant X as we countdown to a difficult day.  I'm a person who remembers the significant dates, both good and bad.  I can tell you the date I graduated from high school and the date my college boyfriend dumped me.  I've always had a good memory for dates, and while that has been great for the celebrations, at different times in my life it has been crippling when I've marked the painful dates of my life.  Recently, I found myself facing a date that I had been dreading for months...the "due date" for the child that I miscarried at the end of last year.  It was as though an hourglass had been turned over in my mind and I was watching the sand fall down on me, ready to bury me anew in the grief and pain of the loss of that baby.  I found myself praying for God to give me the strength to get through that day, knowing I'd likely be buried under blankets and tears.

As He has done several times in my life, God sent words through my mother in answer to my prayer.  She and I were talking just a few weeks ago about this very subject and she said something that had never occurred to me.  It is the enemy that wants us to give those dates a place of significance and use it each year to drag us down, not God.  God wants us to mark the times when He has triumphed in our lives, and we have overcome because of His strength.  While we may not be able to completely forget the date, we can choose how that date impacts us and how we want to live on that day.  Her words made me think of the feast days that God commanded the Israelites to celebrate each year.   Those days marked times of victory, deliverance, and provision.   The dates when God has done these same things in my life, are the days that He wants to be most significant in my life. 

This realization, helped me to make a plan for the "due date".  I enlisted the help of my husband and together we planned a day of fun and time together.  Rather than spend the day in the house wrapped in a blanket, playing sad music, and weeping (that would have been me, not Maurice), we got up and made a special breakfast, saw a matinee movie, played in the mall, and then spent the evening with some close friends celebrating the 4th of July.  We were determined to make it a good day.  Now, certainly there were moments throughout that day where I thought of our loss and felt sadness, but they were moments, not hours.  Instead of the day of sorrow I'd been anticipating, I experienced a day of joy.  Now, where have I heard that before...?

To all who mourn in Israel,
he will give a crown of beauty for ashes,
a joyous blessing instead of mourning,
festive praise instead of despair.
In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks
that the LORD has planted for his own glory. 

Isaiah 61:3

I wanted to share this with you because I know that many of you have a date that you are dreading, or that you dread every year.  A date that holds memories of pain and loss and grief.  It may be the date you lost a parent, or the date the love of your life walked out, or your own loss of a child.  I don't know what that date is in your life, but I know from what I have just experienced that God wants to and is ready to make that a different day for you the next time it comes around on the calendar.  He wants to give you the praise instead of despair on that day. Knowing that it is what God wants for you, I want to encourage you to allow Him to do the work in your life.  Plan a day of joy instead of preparing for a day of sorrow.  Reach out to someone who loves you and have them help you make that a different day.  Don't burrow into your own cocoon of loneliness and grief.  Trust that God will hear your desire for a better day on that date and give it to you, because He delights in you.