Galloping Years

Galloping Years

[Jesus said,] “Anyone who becomes as humble as this little child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. And anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf is welcoming me.”

Matthew 18:4-5

I’m writing this on a beautiful Colorado morning, sitting in my organized home office. Through the open window I can hear the birds greeting the dawn. My house is clean. My house is quiet. My house is . . . empty.

My children, Jay and Holly, are grown and married, and I’m wondering how we arrived at this stage of life so soon. Wasn’t it just yesterday I was in the thick of an endless round of zipping snowsuits, buckling car seats, wiping noses, and bandaging skinned knees? The next week, it seemed, I was helping collect bugs for school projects. But just as I found the calligraphy pen so the children could print the identification labels, they had turned into teenagers and were asking to borrow the car and talking college. One stage had swirled into the next, and suddenly I was an empty nester. Oh, sure, during those busy days of caring for growing children, I couldn’t comprehend the chaos would actually end someday.

During one of Jay’s college breaks, he helped me clean out an old cedar chest. As I refolded quilts, I heard Jay say quietly, “I remember him as so much bigger.”

I turned to see my adult son holding a small blue teddy bear in the palm of his hand. Ah, Blue Bear, his childhood companion. I was looking at my tall, bearded son, but I was seeing a little boy clutching his buddy as together they faced a new Sunday school class, a visit to the doctor, or even a noisy car wash.

Somehow the years had spun past me, and the exhausting toddler whom I had lost and chased and scolded was now, along with his little sister, all grown up. Suddenly I wanted another chance at those years. And this time I wanted to do them right. But life doesn’t work that way.

Jay put the little fabric bear back into the chest and then helped me fold another quilt. And I sighed, knowing I had realized too late what I’d had in those early years.

What special scenes are you carrying in your head? All too soon they will become special memories sewn forever into your heart. —SANDRA

Lord, may I not lose today’s joy because I am concentrating on today’s chaos.

Children must be valued as our most priceless possession.

—JAMES C. DOBSON, PSYCHOLOGIST AND AUTHOR