Just as I was coming into puberty, just as all the passion of life was getting ready to flood into my body—bringing hormones, dreams for the future, and revelations of the spirit—my mother taught me the most important lesson of my life.
She sat down next to me on my bed, signaling this was a ‘mom and me’ talk, the most serious kind. “There might come a day,” she began pensively, “when you feel like you can’t go on.” I furrowed my eyebrows quizzically.
“For one reason or another,” she continued, “life might seem overwhelming. You might not even want it to go on anymore. If that ever happens, I want you to promise me one thing ...” My mouth hung open as I listened in rapt attention to this mysterious lesson. “I want you to promise that you’ll go to bed and wait until morning to see the sunrise. Give it one ... more ... sunrise. Things will look different. Things always look different when you wait to see one more sunrise. Promise?”
“I promise,” I said. At the time, my young mind couldn’t really conceive of what could possibly ever make me feel the way Mom described, but I knew it was important and filed it in the “if I ever need this, I know where it is” corner of my mind.
A breakup with a fiancé that came about 12 years later led me to the point of understanding what my mother had taught me years before. I wouldn’t have really hurt myself, I knew that, but the pain was so great that I didn’t know how I would find the strength to carry on. I fell to my knees in tears and said, “One more sunrise, Ma. I remember I promised.”
I found that it might even take a few sunrises. But the amazing thing was she was right. Everything does look different the next day. The same problems and hurts might be hanging over us like oppressive storm clouds, but the next day doesn’t feel like the end of the world anymore. It feels like life is going to go on, stumblingly, maybe awkwardly at first, but thank God, in all its glory, life does go on!
Eventually, you find new love, you make new friends, you feel the wind in your hair and the sun on your face, and you say, “It feels good to be alive!”
Would that everyone had a mom like my mom. But they don’t.
I once had a friend whose younger sister was coming home from college for Easter. She was his only sibling, and he was so proud of that girl, so full of love for her, that he was just busting with anticipation until we could all meet her.
He was working that day and couldn’t pick her up at the airport, so they planned to meet later at the old homestead. He walked in only to find her dead of a shotgun blast to the chest, lying in the bedroom that she’d so vivaciously left just two years before. It seems her boyfriend had passionately pledged his love as they parted at the airport 1,000 miles away, even as he’d secretly been planning to end the relationship by phone as soon as she got home. Sadly, she didn’t know about waiting for one more sunrise.
Even in her casket, wearing her old prom dress, her brother was still proud of her: “God, she’s beautiful, isn’t she?” he asked us. “I told you she was. I wish you could have met her.”
There was one thing we were all sure of. ... that if she had the choice to relive that moment, that day ... she’d choose life. She wouldn’t choose to throw an entire lifetime away because of one stupid boy at school. She wouldn’t choose to put her dear brother through the trauma that permeated the rest of his life. She couldn’t anticipate, as the young often can’t, that in a couple of years the memory of that boy would be history—and she’d be busting with joy as she received her diploma at graduation, filled with high expectations of the life that lay before her.
Later in my own life, I had to endure my mother’s death because of medical negligence in an emergency room. She had lived with me for years, and I’d called 911 for her that morning. “I hate to go to the hospital; they’re probably going to kill me!” she joked as we sat in the living room waiting for the ambulance to arrive.
When I came home alone that evening—a weary, tear-stained adult feeling like a 5-year-old orphan—I found it was time, once again, to keep my promise: “One more sunrise, Ma,” I whispered to myself.
In my case, I believe that my mother, father, and all my family are in heaven. My Christian faith washes daily blessings over me, pushing me to go on, to keep fighting; to not just live life but to fully embrace it. I try to get up every morning and say: “I’m here and God has given me the power to make this world a little happier today! Just watch what I’m going to do!”
I want to share that with you. Whatever is going on with you right now, promise me you’ll give it one more sunrise. If you can’t think of one single reason to go on in this world, know that you are not alone. Most everyone feels that low at some point in their life, but we do get through it.
Take the smallest, most insignificant thing you can think of that makes you happy and plan to experience it tomorrow: a steaming cup of morning coffee, the way the sunlight shines through the kitchen curtains, a video on your iPhone that makes you laugh, a text message from a friend with that silly emoji that makes you smile. Whatever it is, it’s part of the tapestry of your unique life, and it matters.
No matter if you’re 18 or 81, remind yourself that every day is a clean slate to write on and a new beginning. Make the most out of it. Let someone know you care. Be a shoulder to cry on. Help a stranger. Smile like you mean it. Because this stuff—this life, whatever is happening now—is the only one you’ll get. Hold onto it with every fiber of your being, because it really is worth every sunrise, even if it doesn’t feel like it right now.
