To Where Does a Week Go?

To where does a week go?

To where can I point my finger and say, “It went here.”

An hour in a gymnasium. Sixty minutes of life gone…   

 And yet in one moment life stood still.

Right then, when she stopped and looked back to make sure I caught it. 

And I had caught it. 

Her smile and time stood still. 

 

She ran off again.

Just like that- she and time were gone again.
Our oldest son jumped from a trampoline across the room.
And he “stuck it.”

His body solid in its place. All that force stopped still, but for a moment. 

One moment and then time forced its way on. But here now- as I write- I “stick” time. 

It is possible to stick time. 

  
Baby girl sat in the bleachers next to me watching and waiting and snacking. I asked her to smile. Her joyous smile looked almost painful. Joy can be like that. My heart is often like that. Somewhere between now and then- and pained slightly at the ever present awareness of fleeting time.
 Time… So ordinary and yet so absolutely precious.  

So mysterious to me and yet incredibly so familiar and known by my Maker.

Is it possible to catch time? To inspect it and determine what was infront of me all along? 
  

It is. Like the mysterious green flying insect perched on our window sill, right infront of my face- time can be caught, zoomed in on, inspected and realized. 

But it takes time to do that.

Twenty minutes gone to catching a green bug and discovering it was a baby dragonfly. 

More time spent to set it free.

And what of me?

Can I look a little closer at myself? Zoom in, inspect, realize and discover all that is in me and then set it free?

Twenty minutes spent with a baby dragonfly made me think so.

Time well spent.

 

Then there were piano lessons. Our oldest spent three hours with his instructor this past week. And the many minutes spent riding in the van to and from… They all add up. And I feel it. The weight of the worry, “Is it time well spent?”

But as I watched him teach his sister her lesson, and as I heard the sound of that piano echoing off the same walls that have echoed their sibling rivalry battles…  My heart felt a peace. 

Because not every moment this week is where I wanted it to go. The quarrels, the whining, the battles that come with every week of raising children- how glorious it would be for no time to have gone there. 

Those moments were heavy.

But the sound of the piano echoing on the walls whispered to my weary heart, “It’s all part of learning and learning is a glorious sound.”

  

To where else does a week go?

It went to countless hours of homeschool lessons. Homeschool battles. Homeschool victories. It went to planning  out more lessons of homeschooling.

By Friday we are all ready for a break.

This past Friday rolled around and there was wood stacked high in the fire pit. We checked the website. The state fire ban was still in effect. Sad faces all around, for the loss of more time for roasting marshmallows. Ah- but a grand idea came to mind and I became the hero for the day when we resorted to a marshmallow roasting on the grill.
Sometimes you have to improvise.

Time well spent.

  

To where else did the week go? 

Time at the grocery store.

Time at the playground.

Time to video games.

Time to a movie night with the kids. 

A whole lot of time to cooking and feeding, cleaning and laundry.

Time to fishing.
  

And catching.
  

Time.

The shadow of the fish he caught so perfectly centered his green shirt. I look at it and am reminded that how we hold up our time says a lot about what we hold up in our heart. 

  

Our oldest son had a friend on his heart. He leaned in, “So, mom. How many minutes…”

He wanted to know how many minutes he could spend with his best bud down the street. 

I love that his brother caught this moment. 

The classic face of young man trying to work his charm. His brother sat next to me, taking pictures and laughing at his attempt. Yes, even the young try and bargain for more time.

  

The young…

My husband and I have been leading up the young children’s ministry at our church. 

Part of this week went to planning lessons and teaching.

Time spent praying for God to reveal to each of their hearts so much more of his love than we ever could.

It’s been the end of every week for us for some time now.

We start the week in a house full of kids.

We end it with even more. 

Time invested. 

  

A new week will start tomorrow, God willing.

More homeschooling, gymnastics, piano, dentist appointments, grocery shopping, planning for children’s church… 

The whirlwind will start again.

Yours will too.

And at the end of the week we may find ourselves asking once again, “To where does a week go?”

God help us to live out this next week in a way that surpasses the choices we made this week. Help us live out this next week in a way that we will be able to know with confidence we spent our time well.
  
 

 

The Moments that Matter Most

Chubby cheeks,

And little,

Chubby hands,

Curled around my face.

Tiny grunts,

As he tries to hold in his laugh.

And in these moments,

The laundry,

The dishes,

The floors that need swept,

The papers that need graded,

And every other,

Seemingly

Important thing,

They are all forced,

To wait.

Because these,

These are the moments.

These are the moments,

That will last.

These are the moments,

That matter most.

 

Capture the Moment

Yesterday I lost all the pictures and videos that I had stored on my phone. Just like that, four months of precious moments gone. It brought me to tears. Even more as I thought about it into the evening.

That is how life is. So many moments and in an instant they are gone. No one remembers the song they sang when they were three or the way their dad threw them into the air under a tree to catch them in his arms, over and over and over again, at the tender age of one. I wanted to hold on to those moments in the only way I knew how.

One-thousand and thirteen moments gone in a second. Thousands are gone every day. You want to press pause and hold each moment for just a moment longer but you can’t.

I have told myself that I am taking the pictures for our kids but I know that is not the truth. Truly, they will grow older and chances are- like me- have very few pictures of their childhood. I have thousands of pictures stored on disks and on computers, some that no longer run. I wish I could print them all and place them in boxes that would keep forever, mark each child’s name on them and file each picture by date.

Even then I could not hold on to time. I can’t keep the ones I love in a box. I can’t keep them in my home. I can’t keep them in this world.

They will eventually be gone. We all will. All we can do is try our best to capture every moment, to zoom in closer to the hearts of those we love and focus on the beauty of every moment, whether it be light or dark. For every moment is but a stroke of color, filling the canvas of our life. Strive to capture each moment and take in every color for its glorious worth. We cannot see the big picture on that canvas of our life, but we are given the blessed opportunity to lean in and see in great detail the moments that matter most.