“The day is always redeemable.”

Or so said my husband last weekend, after a particularly rocky start to Sunday.

It was a lethal combination. Hours of tossing and turning all night led to oversleeping ourselves right through the start of church, because the one of us who is the alarm clock was the one of us who finally shushed her brain to sleep as the birds were starting to chirp and the early Irish sun was well over the horizon. A rush out the door wouldn’t have caught half the service, so we made a new plan. Breakfast, a workout, our favorite coffee stop, a few errands.

But it was one of those days that starts rocky and stays rocky for a while. A surge of hormones, a poorly timed suggestion that landed as criticism, and a burst of disappointed tears sent me to the car in defeat.

We rode in tense silence, grudgingly determined to at least get our coffee fix.

Wearily, I practially whimpered, no stranger to heightened drama in these situations, “Is it redeemable?” I was too worn out to even give the question much oomph.

Michael knew exactly what I meant. “The day is always redeemable.”

And so, as if by magic, with that proclamation the day started to turn. The edges curling upward into the barely-there smirk that prefaces a smile.

The day is always redeemable will be the mantra on those rocky-getting-rockier days that come along every so often.

We finished the day with a sunset beach walk (I should remind myself more often that beach walks have never not improved all of life’s bumpy moments), and a trip to the pub.

Wishing you redeemable Mondays around the world.