Where does the time go?

My kids are both getting married and I’m kind of stuck in this perpetual state of unbelief!  How is it possible that they’ve grown up so quickly?  It seems as if I blinked and they were 26 and 23!  Don’t get me wrong, I am happy and excited for them, if I could only make sense of how that time just up and disappeared!  Truly it went so fast!

Yesterday, I had a fabulous day with a great friend.  We started the day by making PB&J sandwiches for the homeless, then went to the Y and did water aerobics and then somehow managed to eat a 2 ½ hour breakfast before heading to a bookstore, where we spent another hour.  We left at 5:45 am and I didn’t get home until 1:30 and it was absolutely fabulous, but again, I have no idea where the time went!  I am beginning to think I have a problem with time management!  I have to admit, I loved the freedom of just “being,” isn’t that what Saturdays are for?!  I will gladly push myself during the week, just to have this sort of day!

While eating breakfast, part of our conversation was about the passions in our lives and how we need to look back over the lists we made last summer and actually re-work them and then, more importantly start pursuing them.  These lists were based on the movie, “The Bucket List” and this is all about that issue of time dissipating before you have the opportunity to do those things you’d really enjoy or places you’d really like to see before you die.

I recently remarked to my husband about how it seems that people seem to either get sick or die, near their retirement and I then said, we needed to start “living” before we were too old, too sick or too incapacitated to be able to do so.  Not to mention, they just raised the age of retirement!  I know that we have kind of gotten ourselves in a rut with performing the household symphony, but feel that rather than being finely tuned, we are becoming a cacophony of chores.  Trips don’t have to be lengthy and expensive, well, maybe not lengthy.   I long to see the beach, before the crowds of summer take over.  I love the thrill of walking the beach at sunrise, with a cup of steaming hot coffee and I’d love to give our dogs the thrill of chasing the waves.  Years ago, right after our kids graduated college, we thought we’d buy a house at the beach.  I yearn to set up my low slung beach chair, right on the fringe of the surf and plop down in it with a great book and the aroma of Coppertone. I crave the ability to grab a boogie board and have the waves crash over me as I either ride them in or roll over top of them.  I covet watching the pull of the sea as I sip a beer as the day winds down until we finally head out for a luxurious dinner or back to the beachfront house where we would grill out.   I guess God had different ideas for us, because that was also the time the bottom dropped out of our finances and the economy went south, well further south than North Carolina!!  And that was only the beach, there are still mountains to climb, different states to explore, forests to ramble through.  I want to literally experience it all!

Then there are activities I’d really enjoy pursuing and while chatting with this friend; we were struck how similar we were in our desires of things to engage in.  I’d love to be able to sing, I play the guitar and will sing along in the privacy of my own home but even my guitar skills have faded and so, I need to re-callous my fingers in practice.  I’d love to take beautiful pictures capturing the beauty of nature as well as the wrinkles of time (literally and figuratively – just not mine!)  I’d love to write a novel and have stopped and started dozens of times.  I’ve explored the world of cooking through magazines, cooking shows and our local community college’s culinary classes.  Each spring I peruse the numerous catalogs displaying the seemingly endless displays of flowers and plants and try to emulate those gardens while planting them in the soil of clay famous in North Carolina.  Please, I do try to amend the soil, it really is brick!  While in this bookstore my friend and I remarked about all the books that intrigued us and then there is the library.  There are horses to ride, kayaks to paddle, road races to run, bike trails, not to mention snorkeling, sailing….well I guess you get the idea!

I don’t want to daydream about this; somehow, I want to incorporate this ALL into my life!  There is beauty and passion out there and we need to avail ourselves of it!  I truly don’t understand how someone misses out on knowing their passions.  I bought a “used” book at this bookstore, it was entitled “Questions worth asking Before the Ring” by William L. Coleman and it is for the kids, but I’m reading it first.  When one gets married, there are prenuptial classes that are usually required, and remembering back to my own, they were seemingly lacking, hopefully over the past 30 years, things have improved!  This book is a bit tongue in cheek, which is right up my alley; it even shows the occasional caricature which is usually funny!  Anyway, I was struck early on about a word I’ve already blogged about.  The word was intimate, which is usually a euphemism for sex, but its more accurate meaning is “soul contact”.  The opening of another chapter was about another topic I blogged about and that was how people in relationships are often like children playing games like hide and seek.  No wonder I’m liking this book, eh?  Anyway, the reason this author gives for hiding from intimacy is because of feelings of inadequacy or a sense of guilt, and then he says, we are hiding who we are…..hmmmm…..sounds like my “mask blog.”  Coleman says that we fear that when we marry, our spouses will discover what we are really like and no longer love us.  This is the stuff, I want the kids to know about, to be real, to be passionate, to know each other…..well!

My point now, as it was in those blogs, know yourself and get to know those significant others in your life, discard the masks and find the joy that God intended for our stay here on earth.  Work hard, but love with an abandon, enjoy the beauty that surrounds us and appreciate the gifts we’ve been given.  Search for God, find that intimacy with Him and others.  Time quickly moves by.  I’m not sure who coined the phrase, but it goes, life is like toilet paper, the nearer one gets to the end, the faster it goes! 

Looking up!~Barb