I Blinked and It Was Gone

I blinked, and six months was gone.  He was just born, wasn't he?  Spending his entire life enveloped in the warmth and safety of my body, six months ago he screamed his way into the great big world.  Naked.  Helpless.  Looking for one thing only.  To be nourished: body, soul, heart, mind.  And now he's babbling and rolling and rocking his little body on hands and knees, ready to explore his life with drooly smiles and handfuls of whatever his little fists can gather.  Where has the time gone?

I blinked, and three years was gone.  My little man, my warrior.  Galloping through the hallways of life in search of the next great battle.  Daddy's shadow, venturing further from my arms now, but never out of reach.  Still needing one thing: to be nourished body, soul, heart and mind.  Has it truly been three years since I cradled you and nursed you in my arms?  Now you're vanquishing my home of dragons and bad guys, protecting me just as you've always been protected.  Where has the time gone?

I blinked, and four years was gone.  Nearly four years since we stood before the judge and promised to be your family forever.  Promised to tuck you both safely under our wings, providing protection from the cruel elements that had bombarded your little lives, leaving paths of anger and destruction.  Desperately needing one thing only: to be nourished body, soul, heart and mind.  And now, four years since that day, nearly five since your storms first penetrated our home, we are witnessing a transformation.  You are incredible little people, rising from the ashes and glowing with the radiance of life.  Your scars are becoming beautiful, part of who you are, but not defining who you will be.  Has it really been more than four years since you were first mine?  Such a long road.  So much change.  And yet a blur.  Where has the time gone?

I blinked, and five-and-a-half years was gone.  My baby girl, my first little love.  How my arms ached to hold you for the first time!  You were created in God's perfect timing, a living, growing reminder that daylight breaks after even the darkest of nights.  You float through life like a little bird, gathering up bugs and flowers and all things shiny and beautiful.  You share them with me with sunlight in your eyes, and you look to me for one thing.  To be nourished: body, soul, heart and mind.  And now I'm sending you off to kindergarten, to shine your rays of sunlight on the lives of others.  Can it really be time already?  Yesterday you were a baby, pointing at the cloud-covered moon and asking "Moon doe?"  And now you're going off to school.  Where has the time gone?

I blinked, and ten years was gone.  Ten years since I walked down that aisle on my Daddy's arm and gave you the rest of my life.  We were children, really, setting out to sail on uncharted waters, foolish in thinking that we didn't need a guide.  A Captain.  We very nearly drowned.  And somewhere along the way, once our Captain had pulled us from the water, we learned that a marriage is a living, breathing thing that needs to be nourished: body, soul, heart and mind.  We're sailing now; sometimes on rough waters, sometimes on smooth, into the depths of an endless sunlit horizon.  Has it really been ten years since we embarked on this journey together?  My whole life is intertwined with yours, and yet the years have been a whirlwind.  Where has the time gone?

I blinked, and my life on Earth was over.  My childhood, my adolescence, my school years.  The years of my marriage, one right after another, learning to give up our lives for the others' good, to love as we've been loved, to forgive as we've been forgiven.  Years of child-bearing, nursing and endless diaper-changing, of gathering children into my arms, of correcting, teaching, training, disciplining, and of watching the fruits of my labor grow in both wisdom and stature.  Years of cooking and laundry and grocery shopping, of dropping off and picking up and hurrying and waiting, of wearing second-hand clothes and living in a small house and buying everything off the clearance rack.  Years of sacrificing my own desires to give what my family needs most: to be nourished body, soul, heart and mind.

It seems forever, yet it's such a short time.  Soon my children will be graduated, married, and I'll be cradling my grandbabies.  And I'll be wondering "Where has the time gone?"

Don't waste your time on things of this world.  Money is nothing.  Big houses, the best schools, new cars, and expensive clothes only contain people, they don't nourish them.  You nourish them.  Give your children...give your marriage...yourself.  This is eternal.

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."  

Matthew 6:19-21