Enjoy It

This afternoon I picked up my five-year-old from her very last kindergarten community class day. In the back of my mind all day were the words I’d written in September on that rainy morning after I had left my girl at her first class and drove to the coffee shop to write before I cried. I let them get buried in my phone memos

 (which are basically a running conversation between myself and my whirling mind) and never ended up posted them; but today I dug them up. 

It goes without saying, this school year has gone by so fast. 

When the elderly lady at the grocery store puts her hand on your arm and looks you in the eye with a solemnity that catches you off guard while you try to wrangle your toddler from standing up in the seat of the cart and says the words that could so easily pass as cliché; “Enjoy every moment, it goes by so fast.” What she actually, literally means is: ENJOY EVERY MOMENT, IT GOES BY SO FAST. 
What she actually literally means is: Enjoy the wrangling of the toddler, enjoy the hustle and bustle of grocery shopping with kids, and enjoy loading the minivan, buckling all the seats, driving home to then unbuckle them all, unload it all and put it all away with the help of chubby, clumsy hands. Enjoy it. You will not get this experience, this day, this season, this year back. 
What she literally means is: This is your life. Right now. Enjoy it. Don’t rush it, complain about it, wish it away, or pine for anything else. Enjoy the days you get to shop with little helpers, enjoy that the growing minds ask questions of you on every single aisle, and enjoy that they actually love spending time with YOU. 
That elderly lady who caught your eye knows that clichés are really just truths that the Experienced know by heart, and that there’s really something to this “enjoying-the-season-you’re-in” thing. She looks back and she remembers; she can’t go back to enjoy that season again, so she speaks to you while you’re in it now to help you remember to squeeze every last drop of enjoyment out of it while you’re here. 

This reminder of the truth that babies grow up and life chapters end and open onto new ones is not actually meant to make our hearts ache. It’s not meant to feel like a taunt that what we have now will one day be taken away, and it most definitely isn’t meant to cause us to make a wild grasp for control of time and circumstance in effort to hold on to what we know. No. The knowledge of the fact that children grow and seasons change is meant to open our eyes from apathetic sleep and cause our hearts and our hands and our whole entire selves to choose to be ALL HERE and ALL IN, and to enjoy where we are right now. We need reminders like we need alarm clocks so that we don’t spend our whole lives sleeping with our eyes open, watching from the sidelines.

This big girl of mine went to her first kindergarten class today. I wanted to cry my eyes out when I left her in the classroom, and had to make myself leave the parking lot. Instead of tears though, I drove to the nearest coffee shop and wrote my heart out. I need to process instead of panicking. I need to rest in His choice to measure time as He does instead of resisting something I cannot fully understand. 

Cliché aside, it really does feel like last week that I was rocking her to sleep, a tiny newborn doll. My mind can’t quite wrap around this. 
Since she turned one week old and the realization hit me like a truckload of bricks that time keeps moving on, with or without my consent, I have develop a complicated, bittersweet relationship with time. I’ve struggled and fought with and howled from an aching heart at God that time is flying by way too fast and I just cannot handle this. 

Slowly- very slowly- through anxiety and panic and, at times, avoiding deep thoughts of any kind;  through grace upon grace and because of my Lord’s patience with me, I’m starting to learn the beginning of this lesson of time and using it wisely.

It’s as simple and as complicated as this: I cannot slow time down, but I can enjoy today and all the little victories of a brand new kindergartener’s life. I can thank the Lord for what I have, what I have had, and where I am now; because thankfulness makes sense of things. I’m finally catching on to the idea that it’s really quite simple, the way to real-life contentment and joy. It’s like a lilting rhythmic dance, and the steps are easy enough to learn by heart:

As you hold that baby-dear close; ENJOY EVERY MOMENT, it goes by so fast. 

And when they get to kindergarten: ENJOY EVERY MOMENT, it goes by so fast.
And when they get their drivers license: ENJOY EVERY MOMENT, it goes by so fast. And when you watch them walk the aisle and your heart bursts in every way possible; ENJOY EVERY MOMENT, it goes by so fast. 
And when you earn the title of Grandma and you don’t even know how you got to this point when only yesterday your own baby lay sleeping in your arms; enjoy every moment, it goes by so fast.
If you miss a step, don’t give up on the dance. If you didn’t make the most of your time in one season it doesn’t change the fact that you can make the most of the one you’re living in now. Don’t look back with regret: you have today. 

You have now. 

Enjoy it. 

It goes by so fast, but it’s life and it’s yours and it’s meant to be enjoyed.