Old Things New Again

I’ll admit that in many ways I can be old fashioned.  While I can be pretty technologically savvy in my professional life, I’m often a pen and paper gal when I am working on things around my home.  I know there are tons of great apps out there for cooking, parenting, and keeping track of your life, but I still love the feel of flipping open a cookbook, parenting by “winging it”, and well I can’t say I have any good method for keeping track of our crazy life (maybe I need one of those apps…) but I do still faithfully use the paper/pen calendar that hangs on the wall in my kitchen to keep track of many things on our schedule.

I think I must have rubbed off on our son in some ways.  In the last couple of months he has discovered VHS tapes.  And he finds them FANTASTIC.  Through a small stash I had collected over the years, he found out there were a lot of great movies and characters he hadn’t seen before in those little rectangular boxes.  When we discovered how much he enjoyed them, the hunt was on for more.  We now have some interesting Goodwill stories (Did you know VHS tapes sometimes sell for as little as 5 for 27₵?!) and have created quite a collection of classics that he LOVES to watch over and over.  Now I spend my days hoping our old VHS player doesn’t kick the bucket!!  In a time where most kids his age know how to stream their media, we are waiting on the whirr of the rewind and adjusting the tracking- and he is thrilled.  Sometimes what was old becomes new again.  He doesn’t know the age some of those favorite tapes have on them, he hasn’t yet realized that Disney used the same voice over talents for MULTIPLE films, he doesn’t realize that most of his friends have no idea what he is talking about when he chatters about his movies- and that is ok.  To him it doesn’t matter that they are old, in his eyes they are new again.

For me, it has been fun to watch his delight and relive some of my childhood favorites over and over with him.  He is always thrilled and surprised when (A) and I sing along to the songs that he thinks are new.  And it has sometimes got me thinking about old habits that I should make new again.  Before parenthood I was great about making the bed every morning.  There have been seasons of life where I kept a great prayer journal.  There are habits I used to be better about in my “beauty routine” and pregnancy really put the breaks on my running habit by about week 18.  Maybe it is time to make some of those old habits new again.  As I watch changes in society, I think about how nice it would be for some “old” things to become important again. 

I am thankful that some of the good things that are old can be new again, but I am also thankful that some of the “old” stays in the past.  I don’t see anything good coming from returning to the days of blue eyeshadow, bobby socks, hair scrunchies, or unhealthy eating habits.  It makes me grateful that we serve a God who can take the old and make it new again when it is for His glory.  And He can also help us leave the old in the past when it does not serve us well.  On those days, I’m also glad that he can make the “old” new again- that I don’t have to carry with me the old things that held me back or hurt me, but the “old” me can be new again through Him. 

And as I am summoned to the living room to rewind another VHS tape, I will smile and say “Thank You, Lord” that He is making old things new again.

“He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!”… Revelation 21:5a