I seem to be hanging onto moments lately. Moments, in the forms of tidbits or substantial servings, are lingering a while as I go back to them for multiple helpings. Some are sweet, delighting my senses. Some are bitter, where I am intrigued to remember why. Others are savory, warming my heart and soul.
I looked into the eyes of my mother this weekend and walked step-in-step with her for three days, both showing her and exploring this crazy city I live in together. It made me remember the joys of childhood—like the red basket she would put me in with a bag of popcorn as we traversed Target in running our errands. I remember the treats we shared as we stopped for “just a little snack.” But, this weekend, I also saw more. I saw a woman who loves well and has continued to grow throughout her lifetime, while still never compromising who she is, even the little quirks that she possesses. My husband commented that she is the same wherever she goes, and I thought that to be a grand observation. Clad in her shorts on the subway, she laughs and jokes with the person next to her, not thinking anything otherwise. She turned up the air conditioner so she could hunker down under the quilt and sleep all cold and snuggly, complete with her bean bag booklight at her side as she read into the night. These are glimpses of my mother, and moments pinned into my mind, as if they were snapshots of love hung on the walls of a family home.
Last night I looked at a picture of two incredibly dear friends together, one of the first of its kind, as they begin their relationship. It is just a moment in time captured in an instant, yet it encompasses so much. This picture is evidence of a real manifestation in their lives—not just something I have seen, hoped and prayed for some time for. In looking at their faces, they look the same and entirely different at the same time—these two I have known for over six years—because it’s as if a few years of lessons and refining have come to a new plateau as they now begin something together. This picture is just a moment, but it also contains several years, lifetimes that came before it, and it possesses the beautiful hope that comes with something new. And this mentioned picture seems to set off a slideshow reel of moments in my mind…moments with each of them individually over the years. These moments are all memories in themselves, but for some reason they are colliding and merging with one another at a rapid pace, yet still maintaining their integrity as a moment in time. Then is now mixed with now, and now is mixed with then.
What day do I live in? What moment am I embracing at the present? Is it the present, or is it the past or future? Does it have to be the present in order for it to be a wise stewardship of it? Or, can it be a montage of many moments together as I embark into the future?
Last night, I spoke with a new dear friend here about her foot and ongoing therapy. I recalled the moment when I was 17 years old in which I ran harder than ever that day and something in my foot snapped. Physically, that moment changed everything for over a year, and that moment brought effects that changed the course of my life. It set the course in which I would surrender athletics and its pursuit, allowing God to open my eyes to new things and new people. I shared this with my friend, and found out that she too, had a very similar injury in a very similar place when she was at the same age. We looked at each other in a sense of curiosity and delight for the similarities we yet again find between the two of us. These moments, if not revisited, would not help in the weaving of a new fabric of common strands of experiences that we can both relate in and share. It was a moment in which the past and present collided with one another.
But, I too, hang onto the moments of friendships and times past…remembering who and what they were in my life, and honestly grieving a bit at times for the loss of it. It’s still hard to accept that some friendships have been lost, some seasons have passed, and unless God wills to raise them up again, they are laid to rest. Sometimes I feel as if I walk through the graveyard a bit too long, reflecting on the epitaphs and the dates of birth and death. Sometimes I kneel in reflection. And sometimes I have to strongly fight the urge to start digging and try to resurrect something or someone meant to be laid at rest in my life. But also, sometimes this reflecting drives me in my present and in my future—remembering ways I failed or things that could’ve been done better, and learning from its death in how to preserve life in these new things.
Yet—past, present, and future moments—I am not their keeper.
“For God has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in our hearts, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.
I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one's lifetime; moreover, that every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor--it is the gift of God.
And, I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing I can add to it and there is nothing I can take from it, for God has so worked it that men should fear Him. That which is has been already and that which will be has already been, for God seeks what has passed by.”
Ecclesiastes 3:11-15
No comments:
Post a Comment