A Time for All Things

I suppose my last post was all about how behind I felt for 2015…well, that may be a trend this year! In all actuality, as I lean in to a lot of realizations about this season of my life, I am clinging to Ecclesiastes! “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.” 3:1

I have many things going on in my life all at once and I have always functioned that way. I like change and variety so much that I enjoy and intentionally create it. The trick for me I’ve found, is to recognize what I can truly take on, what I am realistically capable of doing well and what needs to wait. Thus the problem is the stuff I’m MOST excited about is often what needs to wait (or what I need to admit I can’t do well)!

Currently, the demands of being a wife and Mom, coordinating, encouraging and maintaining women’s ministry and helping with children’s ministry at my church, plus small group hosting and maintenance is all I’ve got time to do well. (It sounds like a lot I know, but I think of more all the time!) I love that and I hate it. I have a dreamers’ mind and I’m always thinking of some random thing I could do or really want to do. I’m grateful I’m married to another dreamer! We talk a big game together.

I say all that because I’m so encouraged lately not by the brevity of life, but the length of it. My birthday is next week and if I’ve done the math correctly, (communications major, remember?) then I’ll be 36. It’s way more fashionable to talk about how old I will be, but I am so young. My children are just babies! There is so much more to experience!

As I ponder the fact that one day my children will be gone from these walls, all I can think about is what in the world I will do with myself?! As someone who fills time as a sport, that is exciting to me. But more importantly, it helps me to hold on and to dive in to being present in what is before me right now. Time is more of a gift than I’ve realized and this season has a good place.

My more-seasoned female friends tell me how fast this time goes, how brief this period of my life will be and how tightly I should hold on to it. It’s easier for me to get excited about what’s next though! So I’m continually grabbing myself by the shirt and yanking my heart back to reality. Often I have to tell myself to come back, be present in what is before me now and ask for grace to fully enjoy and commit to memory the quiet rhythms of our life. What’s now is good. I am deeply grateful for this happy and mundane life. It is a gift from God and it is rare to get to enjoy it.

I want to tag and give a shout out to this woman, Kara Tippetts. If you aren’t reading her story yet, may this help you start. She is a young terminal cancer patient, wife and momma and she writes about what dying is like. I hope you’ll let that last sentence sink in…

She says, “I feel like I’m a little girl at a party whose dad’s asking her to leave early. And I’m throwing a fit. I’m not afraid of dying. I just don’t want to go.”

I am so inspired by this woman and her public vulnerability as she walks towards what I think is the hardest thing; an untimely end. Reading her story has made me cry over and over again. It’s pulled me back and encouraged me to be present in what is happening in my life now and the lives of those around me right now.

So if you feel rushed in life, if you feel behind the curve, may it be a blessing to turn that around to being a time to enjoy where you are right now. May you be present in this whether it is a season of lament or joy!