Time

It's almost the end of another school year.  My oldest will be in 2nd grade next year and I can hardly believe it.  At least my baby still has one more year of preschool before I have to send her off on the "big yellow bus."  She so badly wants to get on that bus to go to school with her sister.  I keep telling her, "Only one more summer, then one more school year, then one more summer, and then you'll be on that bus!"  It's amazing how you measure "time" once you have kids.

I've been thinking about time a lot lately.  How fast it seems to go at times and how painfully slow it seems to go at other times.  The truth is, time is exactly the same, day in and day out.  It never changes.  While we're on earth, there will always be 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour.  There will be day and night every day.  Time won't stop because we want it to, and we can't speed up time either.  I'm sure I'm not the only one who's ever wanted to change time.

I remember when my oldest daughter was a toddler and my youngest was an infant.  How long the days seemed.  Someone said to me during that time, "The days seem to go on forever, but the years will fly by."  I used to think, "Yeah, right.  These are the slowest years of my life."  You know what, that person was right.  I look back now on all the sleepless nights and all the spit-up I wore on my clothes and had to clean off of everything, all the feedings that seemed to take hours, all the toys scattered everywhere because I had no energy to put them away, the piles and piles of laundry, the long afternoons when the girls were bored and needing to be entertained and all I wanted to do was take a nap, the days of teething that seemed to last forever...

Even though it seemed like forever at the time, I'm sitting here now thinking, "Where did all the time go?"  I can hold intelligent conversations with both of my girls.  They are so smart.  They are good learners, awesome artists, and say more words in one day than I could ever have imagined.  My little Sarah still loves to snuggle with me and I'm so glad.  She can make her body curl up into a tiny ball on my lap and I love, love, love it.  My Hailey will still snuggle with me a little, but she'd rather be off doing something else, which is totally natural for her age.  I still can't believe she will be seven years old next week.

Time really seemed to speed up once she started school.  Maybe because we had a set routine that we had to do every day.  Kids are really good at wanting to speed up time.  Especially when they have something that they're really looking forward to, like a birthday party or a trip to Disneyland.  My husband and I learned early on not to mention any major events or trips until very soon before the actual event at the risk of being "whined" to death by the girls.  Or asked for the millionth time, "When do we get to go?  Why can't we go NOW?"  If you're a parent, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Thinking back to when Hailey was born, I remember wanting time to go faster.  I couldn't wait for her to sit up on her own, then crawl, then pull herself up to stand, and then to walk.  And boy did she make me wait.  She didn't sit up on her own until 8 months, she crawled at 11 months, pulled herself up at 13 months and walked on her 16 month birthday.  I was freaking out!  I was convinced that she had a disability even though the doctor assured me that she was totally fine.  And she is!  She just liked to do everything in her own time, and she's the same way today.

Isn't it funny how when the second baby comes along, suddenly you don't want to hurry time as much?  At least that was how it was for me when Sarah was born.  I knew she was going to be my last child and so I wanted to slow down time every day.  I remember midnight feedings and how I would let her linger on my shoulder just a little bit longer after she'd finished her bottle.  I would breathe in the smell of her hair and try to burn it into my memory.  I did the same thing with Hailey, but I have to admit, not nearly as often as I wish now that I would have.  Time can teach us things.

Here are some quotes about time:

"How long a minute is, depends on which side of the bathroom door you're on." ~Zall's Second Law

"Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you." ~Carl Sandburg

"Time is a brisk wind, for each hour it brings something new... but who can understand and measure its sharp breath, its mystery and its design?" ~Paracelsus

"Time, the cradle of hope.... Wisdom walks before it, opportunity with it, and repentance behind it: he that has made it his friend will have little to fear from his enemies, but he that has made it his enemy will have little to hope from his friends." ~Charles Caleb Colton

"Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can't buy more hours. Scientists can't invent new minutes. And you can't save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you've wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow." ~Denis Waitely

Here are a few things that time has taught me:

You can't get it back once it's gone.
Sometimes it's a healer, and sometimes it isn't.
It will eventually show up on your face.
It's a powerful thing, if you let it be.
It's not always "fair."
You can't always redeem lost time, but God can.
It's entirely up to you what you do with it.
Sometimes it's OK to let a little time slip by and take a rest.
It can be our best friend or our worst enemy.
It's a precious gift every day.
If you still have time, you have opportunity.
We should never try to rush it if the Lord has asked us to wait on Him.
I want to make the best of it so that I have as little regrets as possible.

I'm sure most of you have heard the following passage of scripture, but it's well worth reading again...

Ecclesiastes 3:1-15, 22

A Time for Everything

"1 There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
2 a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8 a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.


9 What do workers gain from their toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. 13 That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. 14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him. 15 Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before; and God will call the past to account."

"22 So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them?"

My "work", at least for this time in my life, is to be a mother and a wife.  Verse 22 reminded me that I need to enjoy every moment of it because it is what God has called me to do.  The time I spend with my kids and my husband is precious, and it's going too fast.  Sure, God has called me to other things as well.  But, my time needs to be invested more into my relationships than anything else.  God has given me these children to love, to train, to teach, to inspire, to encourage, and to help shape the women they will become someday.  A day I think will be here far too soon for me.  He has given me my husband, to be his helpmate.  To inspire, encourage, and to build him up.  To be a team.  Take the time to invest in your families.  It will be worth it.