Life Set Apart

“You’re gonna miss this, you’re gonna want this back
You’re gonna wish these days, hadn’t gone by so fast
These are some good times, so take a good look around
You may not know it now, but you’re gonna miss this

Five years later, there’s a plumber, working on the water heater
Dog’s barking, phone’s ringing, one kid’s crying, one kid’s screaming
And she keeps apologizing, he says, “They don’t bother me
I’ve got two babies of my own, one’s 36, one’s 23″
Huh, it’s hard to believe”

That Trace Adkins really sang the song of this Mama’s current heart looking ahead to her future…

As I was cutting strawberries for an afternoon snack because I missed lunched… I guess in the midst of feeding the boys and coming home from morning activities, I genuinely forgot to feed myself. And as I’m cutting, all I can hear is a little whisper, in Trace Adkin’s voice, “You’re gonna miss this”. I haven’t heard this song in forever, why is it playing now in my mind?

My Mama heart suddenly had a future perspective of myself looking back to these days…

A roof leak, a small home with a living room filled with toys, sticky countertops, messy highchairs with food in crevices I can’t seem to figure out (why are there crevices in high chairs?!), second-hand furniture, and boys that need multiple baths a day.

Some day my home will be quiet for longer than two hours in an afternoon.

Some day I will take a phone call without my baby nursing on my chest, my son singing songs on the top of his lungs in the background, or needing to break up a fight in the living room from a toy being taken out of someone’s hand.

Some day I will go throughout my day without being tackled or have a shovel thrown at me rather than handed to me while having “help” in the garden (this was just yesterday..).

Some day I won’t have someone undoing all that I have done. Example: Mom turns lights on, son turns lights off. Mom plants seeds, son digs seeds up and proceeds to eat dirt. Mom makes a plate of food to be eaten on the dinner table, son throws plate on floor. Mom closes door, son opens door. Mom tries to get in car, son locks car door with toes. Mom is driving left into town, son screams to go right.

Some day I won’t have a backseat driver. I also won’t have someone to sing Zipadee do dah with either.

My car some day will be empty. The house will be empty. I will need to ask God to fill the silence with his voice, set times to have the grandbabies over, and I will need God to give me tasks to fill the extra time so my hands don’t grow silent.

I need to remember this reflection not to make myself sad, but to realize that this is truly the sweetest time of my life thus far. A perspective shift from looking at the mess around me, within my home, my cracker crumb filled car… the constant noise within my walls, and shift to enjoying every bit of it.

Now, will I miss the talk-back moments? The potty training catastrophes? Ugh… ask me again when I’m 80. I still don’t have a sense of humor of those moments. But if I back up again, those moments too are so small in the grand scheme of it all.

So Trace, you can live rent free in my mind as I experience the hard days in Motherhood. While I potty train my second, while I encounter the 100th meltdown of the week… maybe this song will shift my frustrations into hugs. My hard into joy. Because God is showing me something in this moment – maybe it’s how how to give grace, how I am given grace, how I can love instead of act out, how I can embrace, how I can refrain from embracing, how he made each one of my children different, how he made me their Mama, and how short of a season God designed them to be with me. It may look too big and hard in the moment, a moment you want to desperately run from and have them grown and putting on their own shoes again, but to step back and look at how small and special these moments are, is actually to step into them with love and perspective how God would.

So let the old men & women in the grocery store swoon over your little ones. Allow them to share stores with you about how “you’re going to miss this” and let them tell you really how much so you too don’t miss this.

I know I will miss this.

I will miss cutting up food in extra small pieces so they won’t choke.

I will miss miss their little voices that some day will turn deep on me overnight.

I will miss how they communicate with each other by spitting.

I will miss their oversized t-shirts, arm rolls, hugs just moments after screaming in my face, their finger dimples, their soft baby skin/face, being able to pick them up and carry them, having late night chats with them (yes, they are already beginning! And I make sure to include ice cream to incentives it more), watching their face light up over their favorite meal on the table, Dada coming home, or an airplane flying by.

I will not know how much I will miss it until this season is over and I walk into the next one on my littlest’s wedding night…

Lord, help me to have a perspective such as “you’re gonna miss this” in my every day, so I can embrace this season for all that it is, enjoy it, walk through the challenges with you, and know this too is fleeting, and some day I will miss it. May this allow me to be more like you, walking with more intentionality and perspective, more laughter and less fret, embracing the chaos rather than apologizing for it, more love and less anger, and more prayer and less worry.

Thank you, Lord, for giving me the gift of children and the season of life that is so sweet and special that some day I will miss it.