In the last several days, I have really considered how fast everything is going. Being engaged to Ben felt so long and drawn out, but since our wedding day, everything as flown by.
I look at yesterday, and I can’t remember everything I said, things I did, or all the exchanges with my husband. I feel like I have lost a hundred important moments. Just gone.
A few nights ago–quite late and in the darkness– I began to think about our wedding and our first year of marriage. We aren’t that far removed from it all…and yet…. I can’t remember special things about these times.
This is us dating
This is us getting engaged!
This is us taking engagement photos.
This is us getting married
I’ve discovered that I have to think hard about the moments on our wedding day that made it magical. There were so many! The vivid, beautiful memories come back to me, but I have to think with purpose in order to get to them.
It makes me just a bit sad.
And of course, there were the first few months of marriage that led into our first year. Oh what a wonderful first year! I remember things, but I can’t remember every one. I remember thoughtful ways my husband loved me, but I can’t remember all those specific things that made my heart smile.
I feel a sense of loss for everything that I have missed or just forgotten. Even though I worked very hard to live in the moments, I’ve managed to forget so many of them!
In the darkness on that late night I simply considered the sadness of forgetting.
But then…
I realized something else.
Maybe, I can’t catch all the lovely, remember all the good times, and live in in the various small moments because I am not supposed to be able to. Maybe this is a limitation in life that is here to make me long for my real home—heaven.
I can’t bottle up all the good things about life, because it’s not in my ability to do so. If I could, all these good and wonderful things would crowd my vision so much so that I would want to stay on earth forever. I shouldn’t want to be here forever. This is not my real home!
Because God has given me this time on earth, I should savor the good times and live inside the daily moments. I should remember the joy of living and I should treasure those small, happy things that happen so often.
But
Because it is not my duty to make heaven on earth, I should also let life be busy sometimes. I should also let it go by in a blur. I should not fight the forgetfulness that is inevitable. I should not be discouraged when it feels like life is just passing me by.
I must live within this limitation of life and be thankful for the things I do remember, but not be sorrowful for the things I’ve already forgotten.
All of these recent reflections remind me of Sir Francis Drake’s words–
“Disturb us, Lord, when with the abundance of things we possess, we have lost our thirst for the waters of life, having fallen in love with life, we have ceased to dream of eternity…and in our efforts to build a new earth, we have allowed our vision of the new heaven to dim.”
The good, the wonderful, the memories, the life….
They just don’t stick, because this earthly place is not the final home for my soul.
Perhaps, there is a season for this fast-paced, blurry kind of living, because it is this kind of living which reminds me that my home isn’t here. Not really. This forgetful world of mine makes me long for heaven where my true home is eternal life with God. Oh sweet thought!
The moments there will be more perfect, more beautiful, and more inexplicable than any I’ve ever known here on this warped earth. And you know what? Time will not be a limitation there! Can you imagine it?
So–
Perhaps, in our hustle to embrace slow, small moment living, we’ve forgotten how important it is to let life go. I challenge you as I’ve challenged myself—
Let life be fast sometimes. Let life get busy sometimes. Learn to let life go, because there is a proper place for these things. These things remind us that this place isn’t our final destination.
And I, for one, have come to welcome the thing that makes me fervently long for my real home—heaven!
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