Redeeming the Time

Little Sarah and I have some wonderful conversations while we go through our days together. She is at that great age of 5 where the world is a big exciting mystery to her, and the questions are endless. I love to answer her questions, because I can remember when my own mother and my grandmother patiently answered my childish questions.

Tonight, she wanted to know what people were doing up in heaven. I explained to her that they really were not in the true heaven yet but were in a place of rest waiting for the judgment day when Jesus said that he would bring back the saints with him to get the rest of us who are waiting down here. "Resting?" she replied. "Yes, resting," I answered. She thought that over for a few minutes, and then a big smile came across her face.

I knew what she was thinking before she even said it. We don't get a lot of rest around here sometimes. That's what comes of having 7 people in a family who all have obligations that take them out of here all day and all night sometimes. It must seem to my little five-year-old that we are in motion constantly. Rest, to her, at the tender age of five, is already a precious commodity.

I have thought about it a lot, and the only way I can explain it scientifically is that there has been some kind of change in the time-space continuum since I was five.
I can remember when days were seemingly endless. We never rushed through anything. We played and played and played, and then we played some more. We had three square meals a day, some of which I thought I would never be excused from because the conversation went on and on! We spent long, leisurely summer nights running through the plush grass catching lightning bugs. Then we still had time for a long bath, a t.v. show and some popcorn, and a bible story before bed.

I think I have even mentioned before that I do not ever once remember my grandmother telling me to hurry up. Now, it seems like I say it to my kids a million times a day. "Hurry, honey and get out of the tub. We have to go pick up the boys." "Hurry and eat kids...it's time to leave." "Hurry and get your homework done." "Hurry up--we are going to be late for...."

My kids have even noticed the difference from the time they were little bitty. We used to have time for just about anything we wanted to do. It seemed like I used to get a whole lot more done in a day than I do now.

I don't know if that is how we get old, or what. But whatever it is, I don't like it.

I was up alone the other night for the first time in a long time. Hannah can usually hang in there with me until I decide to go to bed. However, this one night, all were down, and I was leisurely going through some tapes that I have made through the years on my camcorder. I have not been good about always labeling them or detailing the contents on each tape. Now that we have begun to lose members of the family to death, it is comforting to go back and see some of these tapes.

I stayed up half the night (and paid for it the next day), but it was wonderful to see glimpses of a simpler time. I reflected on some of the great moments of the last 18 years---the time since I started having children. I watched Hannah's birth and Sarah's birth, and I watched my wedding from the back camera---not the professional's view from the front. Watching my little girls come into the world made me remember how each and every one of my babies was so little and vulnerable and precious when they were born, and I just wanted to be like the little old lady in that storybook "Love You Forever" and go hold each one of my kids right then while they were sleeping.

I wanted to, and I did eventually that night, go and snuggle up to my sweet husband, remembering the last seven years with him and thanking God that He brought such a wonderful man to me and my boys when we needed him the most! We have surely crammed a lot of living into seven years!

Before I drifted off to sleep that night, I determined to squeeze every drop of life out of the time that I have left to rear my children. From the mere weeks or months that I might have with Daniel to the years left with the little ones, if the Lord wills that we are all still here, I resolve to try and make the most of whatever time there is in a given "day."

I fail to believe that there are still 24 real hours in every day. My body tells me that I don't get 8 real hours of sleep at night, and my house tells me that I don't seem to be spending 8 hours a day keeping it, either! But whatever has happened to time, we still have to "redeem the time."

That is why I have dropped a lot of the "fluff" out of my life, and there is probably more that I can do in that regard. Taking away the t.v. set has opened up lots of time that we never even knew we wasted. Delegating responsibility where I can, like the woman of Proverbs 31 has helped some, too.

There are other things, though, that are rather time-consuming, that I am sometimes tempted to skip...daily Bible reading and prayer and meditation, answering a child's question, sending a note of encouragement to someone who is really struggling, calling an aged friend and talking and talking and talking, spending some quiet time with my mate. I have to somehow have the discipline to let some things go if I must to do these needful things.

I guess in the end, it is all about balance, and I am still trying to get mine. I don't know if I will ever have it down to a fine science. Hopefully, though, when my Sarah is a mommy, I will have made enough of an impression on her that she, too, will find the time to answer a child's precious questions.