Pull myself together

That would be the title of one of The Rocket Summer's songs on their latest album "Of Men and Angels". Awesome album, I highly recommend it. Anyway, the words of the song go a little something like this...

"So I must pull myself together; this is a brand new day; pull myself away from my mistakes."

Obviously, that's not the whole song. But those three lines speak volumes. Pull myself together, this is a brand new day? SO TRUE! Life is meant for living in the now, not the then. I heard this awesome quote once. It was by Morgan Freeman in one of his movies. I can't remember which movie but that's irrelevant. He said something like "The now is a gift. That's why they call it the present." I have a horrible memory, but I feel like that was the general gist of it. And I like that quote a whole bunch. Anyway.

But it really isn't our job to pull ourselves together. Because we're incapable of doing it all on our own. The desire to be pulled together and away from past mistakes has to be there; we need to want it. But us actually yanking our broken pieces back together to move on from what we've done? Not so much. That's what one calls a "God thing". We are totally unable, inept, stupid, clueless, oblivious, bumbling, awkward, and generally useless when it comes to fixing things in our spiritual and emotional lives. We can't do it alone.

And, thus, we are not alone. The fact that we pull ourselves away from our mistakes is great. The present is a gift--so accept it! Know that the screw-ups you made yesterday, last week, a few months ago, a couple years ago DON'T MATTER. They don't. So stop thinking about them because we don't have time machines and, therefore, cannot go back and fix said mistakes. Unfortunate but very real fact of life. That's where God comes in. If we can't let go of what we've done, He'll remove it from our minds. The Bible (though I honestly have no clue where...maybe in some of Paul's letters?) says that God removes our sins (aka, screw ups, mess ups, etc) as far as the east is from the west. Translation: really, ridiculously far. He'll take the sins, take the blame for the sins, so we can be rid of the sins. Comprende?

So let Him pull you together. Forget about what you've done that you're ashamed of because He's already forgotten them. It's like they didn't even exist. Forget about what you've done because you don't need that burden. You don't need any burden, for that matter.

"Pull myself together; this is a brand new day; pull myself away from my mistakes."

I guess that could be a prayer too. "God, pull me together, this is a brand new day. Pull me away from my mistakes."

I know what a lot of my prayers are going to consist of now. What about you?