It’s the close of a decade — 10 crazy-beautiful years God has so graciously gifted us on this earth.
In the last decade:
- We doubled the number of superheroes in our little league, bringing the number of mis-aiming penises and daily dental hygiene protesters from two to four. Compounding the love and laughter a trillion fold.
- We held five more addresses in four different states (and somehow remained married after DITY moving four times, mostly because making out behind boxes is the most fun of all).
- We figured out what we wanted to do when we became big boys and big girls, sent Super-Spouse through physician assistant school, changed military careers and graduated an Army PA, kitchen table stitcher-upper and professional tri-ager of Emergency-Room prone boys.
- We counted cereal as dinner, toted a 2D Flat Daddy, Skyped and, upon discovering the genius of a magical device called an iPhone, Facetimed our way through deployments 5 through 11. (And Michelle discovered coffee. Because clearly cranberry juice was not cutting it in this life.)
- We waded into the waters of elementary school, middle school, extra-curriculars and our new lives as professional chauffeurs and the volunteer-ers of all things.
- We experienced the joy, love and ministry of the publishing company where I worked for 13 years.
- We traveled to China twice and fell a million times in love with the 600,000 mostly special needs superheroes we had to leave behind. We started a blog to advocate for them. We pray daily for Jesus to change their story.
- We learned to trust, I mean really trust, the only One who is our rock in this life.
And more quickly than I seem to be able to document any of these moments, they’ve raced by.
I can still remember when hours felt like days and days felt like weeks in the trenches of single parenting hilarious but sometimes hard humans in the years of little kid life.
One day, after an especially challenging afternoon of 2-year-old temper tantrums, toilet mishaps and no Daddy dinnertime rescuer in sight, my dear, wise military sister and battle buddy — the one who raced me to the hospital to deliver Superhero 2 when Super-Spouse was stuck on a broken-down plane in Germany — warned me that the days were long but the years were short.
A decade later, they’re just rapidly fleeting.
Ten years later, no one in my house is the same person he or she was in 2010.
In His mercy and grace, Jesus has used two more superheroes and five more moves and seven more deployments and 500 million precious people in our lives to mold us and shape us and stretch us and grow us. He’s loved us too much to have allowed us to remain those self-serving, self-centered people we once were. He’s made good on His promise to toilet train us all and make us little heathens into new creations in Christ … and we continue to trust that He’ll continue His transformational work, because this still-selfish hot mess is nowhere close to a masterpiece yet.
But I don’t want to miss His work TODAY because my eyes are focused on what I’m planning for or praying He’ll do TOMORROW.
That’s why I don’t have a New Year’s Resolution this year.
I have a decades-long resolution.
To be PRESENT over PRODUCTIVE.
To be PARTICIPATORY over PLAN-IARY.
Most importantly, to be present … in HIS presence … every minute of every day.
Because if I don’t, I’m going to miss this.
I’m going to miss His voice.
I’m going to miss His lavish love.
I’m going to miss His grace.
I’m going to miss what He’s doing RIGHT NOW inside this family that He, in His wild and crazy grace, has entrusted to us.
In this, our last year of active duty military life, Superhero 1’s last year of middle school, Superhero 2’s last year of elementary school and what may be the last year I still have little hands untucking bedroom sheets at night and asking if they can snuggle, I don’t want to be elsewhere.
Not mentally.
Not emotionally.
Not on my color-coded calendar.
I want to be so deeply entrenched in the fibers of RIGHT NOW that I can’t help but hear every word He speaks to me.
Every word my children speak to me.
Every word my husband speaks to me.
I don’t want to be planning dinner or car pools or life when my precious Father and the family He entrusted to me are trying to share the whispers of their hearts.
I want to be right here in THIS moment and in THIS conversation where Jesus has placed me, loving one second at a time the person He places in front of me, keeping my eyes and my heart in tune with not the pace of my calendar but the pace of my God.
Because one decade from now, I will have a 23-year-old, a 20-year-old, an 18-year-old and a 16-year-old. All my people will be driving. My husband will have been retired from the military for nine years. Two or even three of my people may no longer even be living inside my house.
And I don’t want to wonder where those years went.
We get this one chance to be present in this decade to come.
To soak up every second. To love lavishly and serve sacrificially. To not miss a moment or an opportunity to bask in the love of God and to smother that love all over the people right in front of us, and to include our children on this adventure as we do it.
To a new decade of fighting for presence — and basking in HIS presence — so we don’t miss the presents right before us.
Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
~ Matthew 6:31-34