The Days are Long. The Years are Short.

-

A friend challenged me with the title of my blog, this week.  I have chewed on it and about have it digested.  It resonates with me.  It challenges me.  Can you relate with this thought also?  The days are long.  The years are short.

I can blame the revelation that the years are short on several things.  Aubrey, our eldest.  Sixteen.  Enjoying life at full throttle.  Loving life here, but toying with returning next year to the States to finish out his junior and senior year.  Which would equal the end of my direct parenting.  HELLO!?!  The years are short.  He was JUST the newborn in NICU fighting for LIFE.   More revelation: eighteen years of marriage.  Twenty years of being Darron’s best friend.  Why I can still remember blowing dandelion seeds together as our love began.  SHORT YEARS.  Then the fact that we are working on year four here.  I still vividly remember stepping off the airplane onto the hot muggy airport tarmac and wondering what life would hold for us in Papua. 

 

Are the days long?  You bet.  Toddler years.  Four kids, in seven years.  Diapers, tepee cups, bedtime stories (over and over again).  Home schooling (on year eleven). Delivering forgotten lunches and backpacks.  Listening to boys hearts or trying to figure them out without being told.  Redirecting, redirecting, redirecting (this equals mothering boys…I’ll share those insights in my book on BOYS….haha).  Keeping romance alive in the day to day rut of life.  Many days gone by with not enough acknowledgment or appreciation for each other.  Trying to practically date in a land that is not conducive to dating (we are making healthy strides in this department….I’ll share that in the book on Fighting for Love).   Living life in a third world country.  My shortest day in the kitchen is three hours.  That is with someone washing my dishes.  The internet has been on with a pathetic 1-4 minutes on and 10 minutes off cycle for most of our return.  This makes doing any kind of business on the Web, take hours longer.  And the …..  (Book title….????) I just am going to stop right there.  It’s tough.  The days are long.

 

Are your days long?  It doesn’t matter whether we are in the parenting years, the mid years or the golden years.  The reasons can be as varied as too busy, too stressed and too bored.  Too hot, too tired, too under challenged.  Too disappointed in ourselves or others.  And so much more…..

I hope that you will agree with me, that the years are short.  For me it means that I need to listen more earnestly to Mr. 16 and Mr. 14.  To not worry about the golden/orange hair dye (I kid you not), but to only worry about the heart.  To read another story and muzzle my nose into Mr. 9’s hair because in just a fleeting moment of time it won’t even be appropriate for me to drink in that AMAZING smell of COMPLETE boyhood.  To not be inpatient as Mr. 11 tries in deepest and sincerest earnest to read, as he struggles over words like the, they, then and there…..but can read  vivacious, impossible and Bulgaria with no problem.  To WORK on making Darron the delight of my heart.  To drink in his love for me and seek to find ways to keep our love FRESH, ALIVE and not STAGNANT.  To survive well here.  To thrive in the mission land, as a mission woman, with not a huge mission.  And yet to trust that my time here is making a difference……

So to long days and short years…..I raise my glass (of passion fruit juice, the juice like non other) and say, “Lets embrace what is before us, for in a moment it will be gone.”

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Last Flight

-
Image
Bob and his daughter, Stephanie, flying on a different day in Papua . Jan and Bob It was another ordinary Wednesday in Papua.  The rain had come down all night.  Leaving the runway soggy.  6 a.m. I had finished reading my Bible and I hear Bob take off on first flight.  I think, “Wow, he is early this morning!”  Then the typical morning craziness starts in my house.  The cooking of a hot breakfast.  Packing school lunches.  Signing forms.  Arranging pick ups.  Off to school.  Exercise.  Home. Unfortunately, the freezer has frozen over so much that the door is on longer sealing.  It’s a forced, defrost the freezer day.  Out comes all the food.  Towels are laid everywhere.  Drip. Drip.  Jacob is on his 3rd day of not feeling well.  It has been a week of no routine.  No home school.  POP a video into the DVD player for Jacob and lucky little brother to watch.  I go into the office. I hear the plane take off again, 2nd flight. BOOM .  A sickening feeling enters my stomach.  That wasn
Read more

Change Never Happens Fast, Except Today it Did

-
Image
Today (Wednesday, Nov. 1),  Darron and Gary were leaving on an afternoon flight to the Philippines.  The nicer of our two cars had just been picked up from the repair shop ( it was an alternator this time).  They are at that stage.  Always, something falling apart.  With the mission mobile, we can’t complain.  It is 21 years old!!!!  Darron just popped down to the hanger to fill up the tires with air and I heard him pip the horn at the gate, to indicate he was read to go to the airport.  Yet, he had a different message.  The tire needed repaired…..or more probably replaced. Groan.  There is ONE thing, I disdain as a woman and that is handling car problems.  It’s hard enough to do it in your home country and a language you are fluent in.  Try doing it in a foreign country.  Also to me, it is a MANS world.  If you want to plop me in my discomfort zone, tell me I have to get the car fixed. So off we drive.  Air hissing out of the tire.  The good news, my husband is by my side.  The bad ne
Read more

Anguished Hearts

-
Image after image flashes through my mind.  I see little but “growing bigger and stronger” two and half year old Azarya coming towards me on the gravel runway.  Wanting to give me a high five and nothing warms my heart more.  Knowing that this is the little boy who drank his way back to life with goats milk.  More images of all over campus this little boy waving at me and smiling shyly, running and playing like normal children should.  Every time I saw him, I rejoiced in the second chance that Jesus had given him.  More images of being with his Mommy and Daddy and their JOY and gratefulness in Ayarya’s strength and change as he transformed before their eyes from being severely malnourished to vibrant.  Ida, his Mommy, is my closest Papua friend, and I see so many images of her and I chatting and laughing together and enjoying her new fat little baby boy, now two months old.  Despite that Ida was still morning the unexpected loss of her father and still mourning the loss of her first ch
Read more