I’m not sure whether it was the moment she walked across the stage in her cap and gown.
Or rather the moment, just the very next week, when she smiled wide and walked the aisle as one of the maids of the bride. Or the handful of days later, when she leaned over the flames and blew out the ring of candles on her 18th birthday cake.
“Weigh down this moment in time with full attention, and the whole of time’s river slows, slows, slows.”
It actually might have been the moment just on the eve of her 18th when she came back into the kitchen as I turned out the lights, as she whispered, “Be the very last of my childhood hugs, Mama?”
I still was bravely blinking back all this liquid love when I sent her a photo, just before midnight, of her as a four-year-old mop of riotous curls and ocean blue eyes, and she’d messaged me back, as the clock ticked down to midnight and she waved goodbye to to being a child:
“Mama? I ache for eternity —- when time won’t hurt us anymore.”
And I’d swallowed hard.
That’s when I knew that there were things I needed her to know before it was too late, things I needed to return to before I blew out another ring of candles on my own cake —- because maybe, whenever we return to what is true, it’s never too late to begin again.
And it’s true:
Time only hurts us when we stop growing toward joy.
“Time only hurts us when we stop growing toward joy. Find a way to keep growing toward joy, and the passage of time can’t keep you sad.“
Find a way to keep growing toward joy, and the passage of time can’t keep you sad.
I will never not be the mama who misses the dash of freckles across her little girl pixie nose and the way, for years, her tendrils fell around her face like the curl of a ribbon wrapping a delicate present that I never stopped delighting in. Yet, she never ceases to surprise: She’s feisty tenacity and the buoyancy of joy and always, whatever her 4 older brothers could do, she could do with grinning chutzpah and her long blonde hair blowing in the wind.
And it may feel like time blows away in the wind, that there are only a mere 18 birthday cakes that we get to blow out the birthday candles together, only 18 summers to write our photo album of memories, only 18 Junes, 18 Julys, 18 Augusts, before their final graduation and relocation.
It’s true:
There will be endings and lasts and packing up and moving on, there will be seasons that close and doors of firsts that open, there will be a bittersweet ache and time will never cease to disorient because we were made to live forever beyond time.
But what if:
The time of childhood is for building a relationship that bridges into more time together through adulthood.
And what if the deepest reality is that, not matter the age or the summer:
As long as you’re aware of time, you still have time.
As long as you are still experiencing time, you still have time.
If you can still see hands on the clock — there is still time to reach your hand out so two hearts can touch.
Sometimes, when you look up at the clock on the wall, it whispers to your own heart:
You have more time than you think – but you may be less present than you imagined.
It’s never so much about a shortage of time – and more about a shortage of intentional attention.
“Don’t let the passage of time make you more anxious… but use time as your passageway to be more attentive.“
I bake the cake and pick the flowers and hang the balloons and lay out the candles and the beat of my heart keeps rhythm with the hands on the clock:
Don’t let the passage of time make you more anxious… but use time as your passageway to be more attentive.
“Time is a relentless river. It rages on, a respecter of no one.” I had written in that little first book of mine, One Thousand Gifts, A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are, back when our farm girl, Shalom, was not even four years old, and I had wanted to bottle up all the moments, but realized:
“This, this is the only way to slow time:
Weigh down this moment in time with full attention, and the whole of time’s river slows, slows, slows.”
When our Farm Girl sits down in front of her 18th birthday cake, she grins,
“Peonies on my cake? Mama! I’m so surprised!” She winks and I laugh.
“You have more time than you think – but you may be less present than you imagined.
It’s never so much about a shortage of time – and more about a shortage of intentional attention. “
For 18 summers, I’ve picked peonies out at the mailbox to top her birthday cake, and I wink, lean over the cake to gently kiss her forehead and memorize the moment, this moment right now.
When you’re fully present in the moment, it feels like getting the gift of more time.
When you pay attention to the moments, it’s almost like you’re buying more time.
It’s our farm girl’s last summer at home here on the farm, her 18th, the last summer before she packs up her bags and heads to the big city and her first year at Redeemer University. When the Farmer voice cracks a bit when he mentions it, now and then, “And then, we lose Shalom in the fall….” – and it’s hard for us to find each other’s eyes in the brimming love.
But the truth is, no matter if you’re at summer #3 or summer #33:
The time you have now can build a relational bridge to more time.
It’s never too late to make a date for ice-cream or to go to the beach or grab a blanket and make a picnic for underneath any old tree. It’s never too late to watch an old movie on an old-blanket screen underneath stars or go for an evening walk to watch fireflies in the woods. It’s never too late to just call and say I love you always and forever, no matter what, without end — the end.
Everything we do together now, in this moment — can draw us toward wanting to spend more moments together.
True: Things will change, but change means growth – and always: Time only hurts us when we stop growing toward joy.
What’s more important than how much time you have, is how present you are — which gives you the gift of more joy in however many moments there are.
And in one blow, she blows out those candles and her dad and I smile and blink it back.
Just because things won’t be the same – doesn’t mean that things can’t be good.
Shalom looks up, her eyes brimming with all this liquid love too.
Time passes, but if you don’t let it pass by without weighing it down with all of your attention, it slows and you feel the weight of all this glory.
What’s more important than how much time you have, is how present you are — which gives you the gift of more joy in however many moments there are.
She gathers the peonies off her 18th birthday cake and I take a deep breath:
Every moment can hold the scent of even more grace.
READ PART 2 of this series on Time:
How to Not Waste Your One Life, But Make the Most of the time You’ve Got Right Now: Do this (Part 2)
How do you find the way, even now, to the life you’ve always dreamed of — and trust that it’s not too late?
How do actually practically find way to to live that is receptive to the love of God even now in your story — so that you can actually persevere & grow toward joy?
What does it personally look like to form your mind, your days, your life, into the deeply meaningful, cruciform love of Jesus and let God love you in the ways He deems good and best?
What does it powerfully look like to have a new way of life, a new way of being that rests fully in the hesed lovingkind ways of God — especially now?
