Aging bodies, brain farts of the mind, and time once again escaping us… Far more often then we’d like to admit, we are faced with the reality of mortality.
God created all of us as eternal beings, yet we’re confined to these ticking time bombs called human bodies. We are daily speeding towards death’s door, the moment we meet our maker, and the time when everything that was once moldable on earth is now set in stone for eternity.
Multiple things recently have brought this reality to life for me:
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Dropping my kids off at college last week and realizing that for the most part, my parenting of them is done.
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Coming home from our trip to an unexpected and unwelcome visit from “Murphy” that nearly required us to auction off one of our kids to pay for. Lol. (Like my wife says, “It’s just money, honey.”)
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Talking to multiple people who are grieving due to the recent loss of loved ones.
- Visiting with an elderly neighbor who felt blindsided by the brevity of his life and the now frailty of his body.
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Taking a stroll through a local cemetery and noticing that more than half of those buried there were younger than I am (age 43) when death came knocking.
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Standing over the graves of literally hundreds and contemplating that every stone just sitting there for decades or centuries represents someone who is currently in Heaven or Hell forever, and many of them having already been there far longer than I’ve been alive.
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Being convicted by the fact that there are people all around me every day who are unprepared for their own eternity and there’s such limited time to reach them.
“Let those who thoughtfully consider the brevity of life remember the length of eternity.” – Thomas Ken
Our 70-80 years is quick and not guaranteed.
The Psalmist David said in Psalm 90:10 that “The days of our years are threescore years and ten… and if… fourscore years, … it is soon cut off.”
If that’s true, then no matter how you look at it, in comparison to eternity, life is fleeting at lightning speed.
James said it this way in James 4:14, “For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.”
How would you answer that question, “What is your life?” And specifically as it relates to parenting, how would you respond?
When you’re in the heat of the battle, I know it can be tempting to wish away certain seasons of parenting.
Whether you find yourself dealing with the long nights, the diaper changes, the terrible twos…
Or, whether you find yourself just barely trying to hang on day by day through the rollercoaster ride of the teenage years.
As someone once said, the days go by slow, but the years go by fast.
It’s true.
You will look back before you know it and not be able to believe just how fast time has flown by. But isn’t that true for all of life?
With our youngest two boys still at home for a few more years, we’ve tried to become as intentional as possible in the use of our time and resources.
We’ve adopted Dave Ramsey’s philosophy about money by applying “gazelle intensity” in our parenting to do our best and finish strong.
…“How then should we live?”
As parents, we have a limited number of times to:
- tuck our kids into bed
- to pray together
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to have spiritual conversations
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to say I love you
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to do all the daily little things that really matter but easily get forgotten
No matter your current age or stage of parenting, how can answering the question “What is your life?” help bring needed perspective this week to your home and the way you relate to your own children?
- Do you need to evaluate the lens through which your children see you, and ask yourself, “What is it like to be on the other side of me?”
- Do you need to prioritize pulling your kids close for a hug and making sure that they daily know you love them unconditionally no matter what they (or you) have said or done.
- Or maybe you need to have a spiritual conversation, or just ask your teen, “Hey, what can I pray for you about?”
- Maybe you need to follow through and take your spouse on that date.
- Maybe you need to intentionally slow down the pace of life this week so you can actually just enjoy the fleeting time you have with the people you love.
Whatever it is, take the time today to align your life with the question, “What is my life?” I think you, and your family, will be glad you did.
“Time is the ultimate currency.” -Elon Musk
“Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.” -Carl Sandburg
