You know how sometimes at Christmas someone sends you a card with a picture of their family, and somehow all of a sudden it went from this picture of all these wild and happy looking toddlers to this stoic image of teens and tweens and you think, “man alive, they not little anymore! When did that happen?”
THAT is this picture for me. About my own life. I’ve always had lots of littles and suddenly I just don’t.
The only way to compete with all the teenagers schedules is to declare a mandatory family fun day at least four weeks in advance and then remind them 55 times. And promise to buy them lots of food.
That is how I got them all to the pumpkin patch yesterday, though not without plenty of complaints. Party Bus conversations have turned to college visits and class schedules and potential majors and which boys are chud and which are fine, and always Ben constant commentary (this boy talks 10 times more than any of the girls) and Emma singing alone about the corn barn and her little buckled in pumpkin.
It all happens fast, as you know, and these teenage years are such a mixed basket of sweet and hard that it goes even faster at the “end”. Having four seniors and four graduations in four years seems utterly impossible. (I don’t know how the Kuenzie’s did four at once, Kansas friends….bandaid affect, maybe!)
I often find myself wishing I had time to think, or time to sit in thinking. I wish I had a day to think about and mourn my grandma instead of trying to process in brief snatches over dishes or carpool. As the holidays start to sink in, I wish I had a minute to really miss and appreciate and remember my parents and my family. I still find myself wishing for time to think about and process our sweet, deep years in Haiti or these kids all pushing their way up and out. Every time I pray for the persecuted church, for our brothers in prison, for our family in Nigeria, I wish I had time to understand, to pray better. I suppose one day I’ll have all the time in the world for thinking, and until then there’s always a minute here with you ❤️.
Revelation 19:11 reminded me this morning in Sunday school that the one we are waiting for, the one who sits on the returning white horse, He is called Faithful and True.
Many have gone before me, but His name is Faithful and True. I don’t know how to quite pray for my brother or how to quite guide my teens, but I know He is faithful and true. He loves us, and can be trusted, the persecuted church, too. The One Who Is Coming is called Faithful and True, and I can live with that.
Even in light of this picture and the reality of begging my children to spend time with me ❤️. For them He’ll be Faithful and True.
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