Breathe in this moment

Today at church our pastor broke down when he started talking about his oldest son getting ready to graduate from highschool next week. He said that he thought he'd be fine, he was excited about the next chapter in his son's life, he felt confident in their relationship and he knew he was ready to move up and on and away from him. But he said that it was a combination of watching him run his last lap of his last track meet of his last year of highschool that first cracked the facade of emotional strength he'd been hiding behind. He reminded us to breathe in these moments.

I had a hard time holding back the tears as Pastor Mike spoke of how quickly time passes. I nodded in agreement as his voice cracked and he could have sworn that just yesterday, no more than a month ago, he was sending his son off to preschool watching him leap from the minivan and trot off with his teacher. As he was comparing his love and disbelief of time gone by to that of God and the way that he must feel about us, I was watching my son poke the last fistful of his strawberry donut down the collar of a man sitting in front of us. Breathe in this moment.

In the last year I've been battling my own desire for control and balance, and it's been a creeping, dark, guilty feeling of mine that I'm slowly becoming the mom that I don't want to be. I feel frazzled and irritable and hurried, not appreciating the beautiful and amazing mess that my children are because I'm already thinking of how much of a pain it will be to clean up later and how I just don't have the time. I feel like I've forgotten why I chose to be home with them and why I wanted to watch them grow into the people that God created them to to be and who He trusted me to mold them into. I feel like I'm running on empty and under appreciated and ignored and pushed to my limit. Breathe in this moment.

As I listened to Pastor Mike and watched my one year old scoot back and forth between my husband and I and into the little girl's goody bag next to us, wanting to bump into my legs and instead of playing nicely in the nursery, I made a decision. I'm going to breathe in this moment and each one like it.

I'm going to breathe in this moment. I'm going to breathe in the tough moments after this. I'm going to breathe in the hilarious moments tomorrow when my three year old combines her love of ballet and yoga posing with scooter riding (picture her riding her scooter on one foot while her back foot arabesques up toward her head- dangerous, I know, but hilarious to see!). I'm going to breathe in the frustrating moments too. Those seem to be taking over these days, with three kids all wanting what they want and wanting it now.

I'm going to breathe in all these moments because like Pastor Mike said, "It surely couldn't have been more than a month ago that I was dropping him off at preschool." Breathe them in because they pass by quickly.