My planner. It’s where we keep our family schedule. It’s where I keep track of our time. A diary of sort. An inventory I don’t always want to uncover.
Has it been used wisely? Has it focused on the important, not just the urgent? Are relationships at the heart of my blocks of time?
Time. It goes so quickly. With small children in the house I’m living out the adage that sometimes “the days goes slowly, but the years go quickly”.
I don’t know how an eight month old baby that we welcomed from Guatemala is now a first grader.
I don’t know how the years have accumulated for our next anniversary to be fourteen years of marriage.
I don’t know how the culmination has happened. But I do know the moments. The ones that have stood outside of time. Of joy and tears and their mingling. Of milestones and setbacks and strength that comes beyond me.
I want my time to not be about how productive I have been with it. To not look at it as a commodity to bargain and trade. But as a gift.
A gift of the right now. Of being fully present. Of walking attune to the voice of the One who never rushes. Who is never too slow.
In step. Using my time as a response to his whisper. To rest. To run. To stand.
Today we wait for the coming. Using our time to prepare for him.
Advent. Come, oh come Emmanuel.
