So Yesterday!

So Yesterday!

Recently, in an attempt to be culturally relevant to my new freshman in high school daughter, I brought up the Miley Cyrus twerking incident.  I asked, “Have they been talking about Miley’s performance at school?”  To which she responded, “Oh mom that was so yesterday!”  Really?  I was outdated within 36 hours.  It happened Sunday night and I asked her on Tuesday afternoon.  I was already “behind,” “out of date,” and “so yesterday?!”

This past weekend I led a creative communion experience for our church’s worship services.  After the first one, I met a second time guest who was not pleased with this creative experience at all.  She was not pleased with the fact that I was a woman leading it and a list of other things as well.  Exhausted from the already challenging evening from no air conditioning to multiple technical difficulties, I felt completely waylaid by this woman.

It was challenging on many fronts as I immediately became defensive, but by the grace of God moved to an attempt to let her feel heard.  Afterwards the processing began with my closest friends and my senior pastor.  I crawled into bed that night knowing I needed to refocus and gain strength from God so I could lead again the next day.  So He and I talked.

God led me to “The words of the wicked are a deadly ambush, but the speech of the upright delivers them” (Proverbs 12:9, NRSV).  I did not feel the woman was wicked, but I felt the legalism she was bound in was.  I did not feel that I was upright or had said anything that would deliver her, but I put my faith and trust in the Righteous One whose Truth is what sets us all free.  I slept well that night and the next morning the AC was working, no technical difficulties and NO ambushes after the service!

Walking this morning, the event from Saturday night popped into my head and I began to rehash it in my mind.  All the things you wished you’d said how I would handle it differently and then a twinge of anger pinched my gut.  How dare she attack me like that after worship?  “God,” I cried out in my frustration with the situation yet no real request or words to say to Him.  He spoke back into my spirit through the words of my daughter, “So yesterday!”

I laughed out loud.  Yes it was more than yesterday.  It was history, gone and done.  Move on Janae.  Capture the thought and move on.  I asked God to help me think about more important things, heaven things and help me to hold my earth things captive to Him.  I asked Him to help me live in today!  Because today is so today and but a fleeting moment it is.  I don’t want something from yesterday to steal my joy today!

Moving from “So yesterday” to “So living today!”