Gratitude

Time once felt like ketchup resisting movement from it’s glass bottle encasement. For instance, it took forever to reach the age of 13. FOREVER. By the time November 25, 1983 rolled around, I had long since given up on it ever arriving.

Now time feels like slick and skinned, parboiled peaches for canning handled with swollen, late-pregnancy hands; literally shooting away as I try to grasp at it. June 30, 2018 is coming for me, for us, and I cannot for the life of me, hold onto the moments between then and now.

In the midst of wrangling over the price of strawberries at the corner fruit wagon, weaving through traffic like salmon swimming upstream to get the kids to school, or catching a warm and genuine hug from a twelve-year-old who once rejected me for adopting him…it will hit me…time is moving at a pace inconceivable. My babies that I once wept over nursing from lack of sleep are independent, strong young women ready to advance the Kingdom through their own lives. Ages that I once thought “old” are well behind me and seem “young” to me now. People who are my age on television decorating shows look MIDDLE-AGED! Memories shared with family and friends are now 20, 30, and 40 years old! How did this happen?

Most of the time I’m far to busy to notice how quickly it’s gone. But today, I’m looking up and around me and I see the road I’ve traveled is getting longer.

Don’t think me too melancholy, though I am right in this moment. When these brief realizations catch up to me I have a choice. Do I sit in sorrow for what has passed? Or do I move on in gratitude? I choose gratitude.

I’ve long said that when I reach the end of my days, I want to fall into the grave exhausted, having saved nothing, but instead having spent everything I had lavishly on this life. I am grateful that I have had the grace to live that way and intend to do so in the seasons ahead.

June 30th brings with it a massive change in our lives. We know that the transition will be difficult. It will be messy. It will be fraught with stumbles and miscues. Yet, I will choose to gratitude. This life is racing along and every moment is a gift from the Father. “This is the day that the Lord has made, I WILL rejoice and be glad in it.”