The Passage of Time

Five years ago, I wrote a short bio for my first graduate class at NNU.  I have no idea how it actually read, but this is what it should have said, “I’m a cynical, jaded, homeschooling mom of five… a pastor’s wife… and I have no idea what I’m doing.”

I am relatively sure I signed my name as “L.” for the first time ever, and thus began a long, unbelievable, sometimes harrowing journey on which I am glad I embarked at least 51% of the time… a journey that shaped and formed my identity more than I imagined it would.

Does time heal all wounds?  I would say no—definitively, no.  But it changes us. I’m not sure I would even be thinking about this if it wasn’t for “Facebook Memories,” which tells me something about the way we process past events in an era where we don’t actually have to remember them on our own in order for them to come back to haunt us.  This one surfaced in the form of a picture of my children a couple of days just before my NNU adventure began.  They were so little.  I like the phrase, “time marches on,” but if I’m real; I think it’s more of a sprint.

Today, I wrote a short bio for my first newsletter at my new local church, where I am the director of family ministries.  If you had asked me, five years ago, where I would be now; this is not what I would have guessed.  I have come to realize that we can only hope that the scales are tipped just enough, every day, that we fall asleep glad for the experience.    

Also, my kids are huge now… some of them closing in on “full grown human being” status.  In another five years, I expect I will be shuffling three off to college (a freshman and two seniors) as I continue to live through teenage parenthood and quickly approach an era where that is all I know (Miah was a “late add,” so I will technically still have a pre-teen for a few more months at that point).

James 4:13-15 is hitting me hard, today:

“Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’  Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that’” (NIV).   

I like today’s bio better than the one from 2012.  I hope the 2022 bio is fabulous.  I know I have a tendency to blaze ahead so passionately that I can miss the moment, though, so I hope to slow down just a little bit, even though time, itself, cannot seem to be swayed.

L.

P.S. Confession: I'm still not sure I know what I'm doing...