I was hit by one of those parental moments of anticipatory grief this week. As my two youngest children exited the van and walked to the front door of the school, I watched my little girl walk with my little boy, burdened by his backpack half the size of his body. Each bursting with personality and creativity and youthful energy. Each so young.
This was a moment, a glimpse I would never have again. For the next day, they would each be a day older.
Experienced parents will sometimes tell younger parents, “Enjoy every moment; you blink and they’re grown.” I appreciate the sentiment. But let’s be honest: hearing that while your baby is screaming in the church foyer, or when your toddlers collapse into an epic fit in the grocery store, or your littles simply refuse to go to bed under any circumstances—well, it doesn’t exactly encourage. In those moments, I would have been happy for a little fast-forward button. Just a little one.
They were right though. Our lives are sieves, and time travels through them inexorably. We can’t hold on to the moments; we can only experience them as they pass through us. Some of those experiences are magnificent; others are brutal. Some we would relieve again and again if we could; others we’d excise from our memories altogether given the chance.
We are porous creatures, and time leaks through us.
It is how we were made. But our finitude and fallenness carries an attendant grief. After all, we will never be sufficiently present; never be “in the moment” enough. I suspect that we’ll all reach the end of our lives and wish we could have experienced and inhabited certain moments more deeply. I suspect a lot of us will have regrets.
Living in panicky FOMO is not the solution, however. Strategizing how to maximize every single moment of our lives will just burn us out.
It is, however, possible to embrace our finitude. To recognize that we are sieves and to accept the momentum not as an enemy, but as what it is: life.
This is why gratitude is so central to the Christian life, and why the Scriptures make such a big deal about it. Gratitude enables us to live in those moments, recognizing what we are, and recognizing the goodness carried through us with momentum.
We are sieves, and life goes through us. There is mingled in every moment goodness and grief, sweetness and sorrow, darkness and delight. We won’t treasure every moment like we should or could, but we can live with this recognition, and gratefully.
That’s what I’m aiming for. I often do a miserable job. But I’m trying.
Love this!
Crying.