When Did This Happen?

I know I am not alone in looking at a neighbor's kid and saying, "When did you stop wearing diapers?" as they stand before you, 6 feet tall, with car keys in their hands.

Asherel and I were doing a fundraiser for her Global competition in DI next month going door to door selling car wash tickets. It was a fortuitous weekend to be doing so, as the yellow pollen that has laid a layer like paint on everything in the city has transformed every car to a yellow sneeze-inducing powder puff on wheels. The tickets sold within minutes. Some people who don't even own cars bought tickets so they could walk themselves through the wash and get out of the pollen, thick as mustard.

But the young lady who opened one door could not possibly be the toddler I remembered who was born around the same time as Asherel. What are these kids... kudzu? One minute they are babies and then the next thing you know they are looming over you big as trees.

Today is Anders birthday. He is my oldest and also the furthest away, in Boston. I remember as though it were yesterday carrying him in a front pack and taking long walks to the mall where we would share a cinnamon roll. Technically since he was too young to eat a cinnamon roll, he would share it vicariously, as would I. I remember details from his youth with surprising clarity, particularly surprising in light of the fact that I cannot remember what I ate for dinner last night, or the name of the capitol of most of my neighboring states....

And of course, I miss those days, and wish I could have them back. I want them back with some minor alterations. I want unlimited patience and energy, time that I could stretch or compact as necessary depending on how well the day was going, and the ability to see beyond the moment to the eternal perspective on where that moment was leading.

But I didn't have those things. So I did the best I could with the little I had. But for all you young mothers out there, I am going to give you an incomparable gift- a glimpse into that eternal perspective from someone who has lived half an eternity now. Everything adds up to create the person you send off to his life someday. Every smile, every frown, every encouraging or discouraging word.... all of it. So when you can, choose patience, choose encouragement, choose gentleness, choose forgiveness. All those things build a pile that becomes character. If I could do it all over again with all I know now, I would. But since I can't, I will trust that God has covered my deficiencies and pray that today my birthday boy will remember only the best we offered.

Job 4:4
Your words have supported those who stumbled; you have strengthened faltering knees.