Time Don't Wait for a Mom

I did not just turn 31. I rebuke that in the name of Jesus. *Waiting...* Well, that didn't work. I guess Jesus is not interested in fulfilling my selfish wish to turn back the clock. He's God like that. Being the Lord and all, I guess He's more interested in giving me a hope and a future...sigh...Jeremiah 29:11 strikes again.

I'm not whining. Don't get me wrong. I'm just in shock. I find it exceedingly hard to believe that I am where I am, and that I am who I am today. God has been so good to me. I have three blessings. I amend that statement. I have hundreds of blessings and am not done yet counting them, and I doubt I will be, even till the day I die. However, I have three that stand out more than the others, and it's right that they do. My husband. My baby girl. And my baby boy.

As I turned 29 twice over this year, I was wonderfully blessed with cards, cake, Cracker Barrel, and outlet shopping from dear chosen family and a beautiful red rose from my sweetheart, and lots of well wishes from friends and family afar, thanks to Facebook. I felt (and still feel) incredibly unworthy. But as much as any birthday is the one day of the year where a person is allowed to think of themselves for once and be catered to, I found myself just in awe of how God "caters" to me in His own perfect way, all year long. My blessings. As I sat at a wooden picnic table parked underneath the awning of a Liteway Outback camper, eating a slice of my birthday spice cake surrounded by campfire smoke and children's laughter, I couldn't help being a bit reflective. Here was my cute-as-a-button baby girl, blonde curls bouncing and and icing-smeared face beaming, happily and messily taking a bite of a cake at a time in between laps around the campsite (sugar high!) and singing her own made-up version of "Happy Birthday" in a greatly exaggerated, pointedly comedic deep voice. Sitting placidly across from me, my handsome man with his deep blue eyes ever contemplating the meaning of life, holding our adorable brown-eyed baby boy whose favorite pastime seems to be using his daddy, and anyone else within range, for spit-up target practice. (If he can perfect his aim now, using only his mouth, why then it will be nothing at all to be sent out to the back forty with a shotgun when he's twelve to kill and bring home dinner.)

It is in moments like these that I realize how quickly time flies. My friend Jennifer likes to quote the Latin, "tempus fugit." How true. It was only yesterday that we brought our boy Judah home from the hospital, and only last week that Bethany learned to talk. Right?? I blinked and our son went from being a helpless infant, head rolling every which way and needing to be held nearly all the time, to a strapping sixteen-pounder who laughs and coos and goes to sleep on his own, and eats cereal like a big boy, sucking it right off the spoon. In predictable cute fashion, most of it dribbles down his chin(s)...textbook baby, yes...but he's my baby. I looked away for one moment and my daughter exchanged her crib for a big-girl single bed, diapers for big-girl "underwears", and baby sign language for whole spoken sentences, with freakishly adept pronunciation.

Sometimes it scares me. Time slips through our fingers and dissolves, regardless of how much we try to hold on to it. Gloria Gaither wrote a song called "We Have This Moment Today" and part of the chorus says, "We have this moment to hold in our hands, and to touch as it slips through our fingers like sand..." If you think about it, life as we perceive it is not one solid whole. Look at it more closely and you will see that it is vibrantly variegated, constructed of moment upon moment, hour upon hour, days that add up to weeks, that add up to years and constitutes what one would call "a life." My mother always used to say to me, "You're growing up so fast. You don't see it, but when you have children, you'll know what I mean. " She was right. How did thirty-one years pass for me already? How is it possible that I am not the little girl sitting on Granny's knee singing "Do Lord" anymore, but I am a grown woman who is a wife and a mother? How did it come to pass that I have not just any three, but these particular three, flesh-and-blood blessings in my life, without whom I would find it impossible to breathe? And more importantly, how do I take it all in, and appreciate it for all it's worth, and not miss anything? Today my husband has brown hair with a few gray flecks that he affectionately says I helped put there. I know that one day there will be little brown left, on either his head or mine, but we will both be older and grayer and hopefully wiser. Today my precious girl walks with her daddy and holds his hand in the parking lot. It will be sooner than I know, that she will be walking down the aisle and taking another man's hand, in a church. Tonight I rock my baby boy to sleep; all too soon, I will be rocking his newborn baby some night while he gets some sleep as a brand-new Daddy.

I wax nostalgic. Although, perhaps it's good to do that on my birthday. While others celebrate my birth, I realize what a fitting opportunity it is to celebrate the ones that mean the most to me in this life. Gifts and cards and flowers and food pass away (except for that peach cobbler that seems to be permanently stuck to my hips now), but memories and moments, once made, remain for as long as I choose to hold onto them and cherish them. And more importantly, the ones who help make those memories. I cherish my husband and my two "littles" as I sometimes call them.

God help me show it and help them know I do. Help me "cater" to them as much as you lovingly cater to me in Your ways that are not my ways. You always have my best interest at heart, even though most of the time I have no idea what You are doing. Help me to have their best interests at heart and to put aside my selfish desires--to be 29 for just one more year, or to be prettier, smarter, thinner, more skillful, more successful, more wealthy, more knowledgeable, more respected, more admired, or more loved. Help me instead to love. And help me to hold precious every moment I have with my family and to set aside irritation, frustration, anger, and sleep-deprived stupor in favor of cheerfulness, forgiveness, and grace...knowing that Your joy is my strength.

"Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." Matthew 6:33

"....the joy of the Lord is your strength." Nehemiah 8:10

"....train the younger women to love their husbands and children...to be busy at home, to be kind..." Titus 2:4-5

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11