On Time

I keep staring at the corner where our Christmas tree just was. We always take it down after Epiphany, this year being no different. I’m sad that the tree and ornaments are packed away. It feels like we just put it all up. Really. I was just getting all of the bins with the décor out and stressing about the shopping I needed to get done.

It was so fast. It always is. I’m always complaining about time and how I cannot keep up with how fast it is. If I am being completely honest, it often scares me how quickly time is passing.

I think about time in bed at night as I put my head to my pillow. Didn’t I just rise off of this thing? How did an entire day go by already?

I think about time as I check my calendar for the day. I’ll accomplish a lot by the time my kids are home from school. I have my remote work, I’ll knock out a couple of loads of laundry, I’ll work out on my lunch break and eat leftovers at my desk. Then the kids will be home and it’s off to jiu jitsu, or a basketball game, or softball, or baseball. If it’s Wednesday we will go to youth group. It’s go, go, go. Until bed. And then I wonder again how the hours were so fast. Yes, I know. We are busy which makes the time go by quicker. Still. I look at my kids’ faces and wonder where the baby faces went. The older moms that would pass me in grocery stores when they were babies and toddlers and say “enjoy it, it’s so fast.” – they were telling the truth. 100% truth. They were giving me a warning to be present because the baby years are lightning fast. My oldest is going to be a senior in high school this Fall. THIS. FALL. We are talking about college. It’s heart breaking. She was just my baby, yet here we are. It’s too fast.

The days are fast, the weeks are fast, the months are fast and the years are too. Like I said before, sometimes it really scares me.

I have to remind myself that it’s okay that time feels weird, because it IS weird.

A couple of years ago I read “A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy, and Triumph” with a book club. It’s written by Sheldon Vanauken, a man who knew C.S. Lewis personally. Read this excerpt from the book:

“C.S. Lewis in his second letter to me at Oxford, asked how it was that I, as a product of a materialistic universe, was not at home there. ‘Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures? Then if we complain of time and take such joy in the seemingly timeless moment, what does that suggest? It suggests that we have not always been or will not always be purely temporal creatures. It suggests that we were created for eternity. Not only are we harried by time, we seem unable, despite a thousand generations, even to get used to is. We are always amazed by it – how fast it goes, how slowly it does, how much of it is gone. Where, we cry, has the time gone? We aren’t adapted to it, not at home in it. If that is so, it may appear as a proof, or at least a powerful suggestion, that eternity exists and is our home.”

When I first read this part of the book, it gave me pause. I read it over again. “Eternity exists and is our home.” Of course. Time feels weird because we were not created to be living in these time constraints. We were created for eternity. This gives me great hope. The GREATEST hope, really. It’s what I am living for.

Until eternity comes for me I’ll be working on getting to an eternity with my creator. I’m choosing Him now to be sure I’m with Him forever. I pray you are working on that eternity as well.