La Dolce Vita

I can hear the earth drinking in the warm water tonight. The sky curdled and threatened all afternoon, then gave way while I was on my home from my sister's house. I could hardly see the road, so I pulled in to our daughter's neighborhood, since I needed a grandbaby fix anyway. 2-year-old Ethan was out on their front porch, cavorting in the rain in his new big-boy underwear. Our son-in-love whipped out an umbrella and escorted me into the house. 9-month-old London joined us on the couch and I enjoyed all the tumbling, sweet-skinned love. My glasses and earrings were fair game as Little Miss Priss tried to steal them. We chatted for an hour and then it was time to get back on the road. I was especially sentimental today, as it's my Daddy's birthday. He's in heaven, having all the best, but we're suffering down here without him. 

I've been thinking of late, about how we view the past, present and future. I believe honoring the past and learning from it is a good strategy, but we shouldn't live there. Time keeps moving on but we can get stuck with regrets, with too much nostalgia (yes, there can be too much of that), and putting a sugary haze on the way things were. I am definitely guilty of it. I am blessed that I grew up with so many good things to look back on, and then had the goodness of God all over our marriage and then those four amazing kids He gave us. Shot through it all are our sin natures and the trials of life, but I have seen the hand of the Lord in everything, both good and bad. 

We're given today, really just today. Tomorrow isn't promised, though we can look to it and hope for the future. My impatient self wants to jump around, leap ahead, fret about pretty much everything. There's always the next thing, the hustle of it, the urgency of the undone parts. Today's looming job was to untangle all the parts of the decor I had done for a really big event. I needed to categorize and parcel up hundreds of items. There's no fun for me in organizing and packing a pile of stuff. The party's over, I'm tired, and my feet hurt. I even missed church yesterday because my tummy was aching and I was dizzy. I was dressed and ready to head out the door when I realized that the only right thing to do was to curl up in my recliner with soup and some tonic water. The Lord and my husband said I had to, so I did. 

After a sweet, schlumming day and night, I woke up and decided to force myself not to rush. I was going to be the tortoise, not the hare. This is an alien concept in my world. I put on some music and started sorting.  Before I knew it, almost everything was packed up and put in the appropriate piles. In these instances, I always think of the Star Wars movie where the pilot keeps saying, "Stay on target..." Isn't that the guy that gets blown up? Either way, it's pretty amazing what a little focus can do. 

Maybe, just maybe, the secret to living in the moment is to simply slow way on down. And quit volunteering for every project that comes down the path, there's that.