little moments tip the scales and they fall fresh.
there were footsteps on our front stoop a few days ago...
my kitchen was warm, the roast was warm, the rolls were warm and i was warm all wrapped up in my apron.
i heard tony's voice welcome our guest in and as their voices mingled i heard the distinctive crinkle of cellophane.
he came around the corner, this gentlemen with the kind face and twinkly eyes and placed a bouquet of daises in my hands.
it doesn't take much.
he talked about her, the wife that he lost, mimicked her soft southern accent and those eyes grew warm as they looked back at distant memories, lost in recounting the first moments of them.
love never sounds sweeter then when it has had time to age.
even when half of that love rests in the ground.
as he was leaving, more life piled in and soon our walls were ringing with the voices of the young.
six years of marriage and two babies later, they drive through on a trip down south and we spend moments that bury themselves deep in my heart.
sweet faces of nephews that peer so seriously into my own.
and i think of him, the one who brought me daisies...
who has lived these crazy moments already.
who sits within walls that echo with memories and life quickens into focus.
we don't have much time.
i don't have much time before the kids are all grown and they leave our walls to go make life in walls of their own.
i don't have much time before the life we have now becomes a distant memory that echoes with the chaos that swirls me all dizzy.
i don't have much time
to love well,
to mama well,
to wife well,
to live well.
this realization doesn't come with a sense of panic.
shockingly, it doesn't send me into a stressed state.
but there is an urgency to be purposeful.
purposeful in the way i talk to and love on my children, my husband, my family and friends.
purposeful in the way i spend my days.
purposeful because Jesus has given me the gift of now. He has given me now that will turn into memories and i can choose how bitter or how sweet they become.
we read it through tonight, lyla mae and i ~ the verse she's to memorize for sunday school next week...
and it's whirling around in my head as i sit, not able to shake it...its message bedding itself down into my present.
so, i listen.
and i pray that it takes hold and i thank Him for tears that clean deep and heal up strong.
for we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
ephesians 2:10
