The Lies We Tell Ourselves

I think I’ll start with this one:  Summer is almost here, so I won’t be as busy…

I almost laughed out loud, yesterday, as I started to fill the calendar, and it caused me to think of my very dear friend who walked alongside me for years, as the adult conversation sanity of my weeks, in the midst of raising lots of very little people in what sometimes felt like a bubble.  Thursday afternoons meant play dates, and if I’m honest they were just as much for me as for the kids.

The kids got older, life took turns, and we often found ourselves saying things like, “We’ll have more time in the summer… in the fall… over Christmas break… after the new year… someday…”

We both made new friends, and the hard truth is our priorities shifted.  And then one day a couple of months back, I found myself in a church parking lot, picking her kids up for a sleepover…

And I said, “I have big news!  I’m starting my Ph.D. in the fall!”

And she said, “I have big news, too!  We’re adopting a baby from Nigeria!”

And then I cried all the way home.  But don’t worry.  I wasn’t driving.

We live in this insanely connected era, but I sometimes wonder how much we really know that matters.  Sometimes I wonder if we’re missing the people and places and things that are right in front of our faces for the sake of remembering yesterday and planning tomorrow.

Matthew 6:34: “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.  Today’s trouble is enough for today” (NRSV).

I had a brief moment of comic relief when I scribbled this well-known verse in my planner and it spilled right over into tomorrow.  Oh, the irony.

Today does have enough trouble, and I don’t particularly want to miss out on it! 

So I’m super excited about chasing dreams, right now, but I’m also trying to balance this with being present in every moment of every day, particularly to the people around me, because life is too short and too unpredictable to be anything less than all in. 

L.