It’s interesting to be living long enough to see history

repeat itself.

I heard that sort of thing from my mother growing up. I read about history repeating itself in school, in letters and in magazines in dentist’s offices over the years. I read about it in Ecclesiastes. The more I read the more I see it. The longer I live I see it: History repeating itself.

So I was driving along and a song popped in my head and I must’ve been humming… one of the children said, O, that’s a new ____ song. I thought… no, no… that’s an old song.  What?  You *know* that song?  Yes… it was… Harry Nillson… 1971… I was in the…  …drifting off.   And then it was affirmed to me once again: there is nothing new under the sun (in addition to: vanity of vanities; all is vanity) and the more things change, the more they stay the same.  And children are still surprised at life that happened before they were born.  Back before… wow, CD players.

I was talking with a young mom and she was lamenting the length of days and the monotony of repetition. I told her, as is my oft repeated mantra these days: this will pass and you will cry for these days. She sort of glazed over when I continued on telling her that these days will be the past all too quickly and she’ll miss them with a physical ache she cannot comprehend at this point in time – but there will come a time that she will, indeed, cry for these days. A curious blend of regret, longing, missing, hope and love. She cannot see that now. All she can see is the daily-ness of today. And that’s a problem with young mothers… motherhood is so daily. Too daily for some and they think real life is happening somewhere else (but that’s a lie). All she can see is the endless mountains of laundry, valleys of despair and dishes mounting in the sink.

I told her she would, one day, be telling another mother these same things. She will be able to tell that future mother more convincingly if she embraces these days and loves motherhood with unreserved abandon. But if she hates these days and continues rejecting God’s precious gift of motherhood… then… she won’t have much to tell that future mother and will certainly leave no joy in her children’s memories of her. History will repeat itself… the daughters will become mothers and who will encourage them? Who will cheer them on? Will they reject or embrace motherhood? Will they be sweet mothers?

I hope she will live long enough to see history. I pray it’s sweet.

So, I was mindful today as I was reading through some articles and noticing a common thread… what mothers went through yesterday, mothers face anew today— but it’s not new, not really. It’s the next chapter. It’s the same thing only different. Different bcz of history. By this I mean that what we face today we have faced already – just differently. As mothers we’ve waited and waited and waited for, say, the birth of the next baby. Then we waited and waited and waited for this or that milestone. Then we waited and waited and waited for the next and so on — History repeating itself. We watch how God worked in a particular situation and then marvel when yet another situation is miraculously covered — History repeating itself. On our behalf. We wait and wait and wait to see history. And you know… for believers what we really want to see is His – story. We all long to see His way and will played out in the lives of our children… and what a blessing it would be to see history played out in our children’s children.

For all of history is HIStory.