What to do when time won’t slow down

When a babe is born, time alters.

We count it in days and then weeks instead of months and years.

There is eating and there is sleeping. Everything grows slow, as our family draws near to greet  our new little one.

At the same time, the clock begins to rush past quicker than ever before as each morning greets a new face, a new body. This newborn growing, is becoming something more every moment, and in that becoming a treasure is also lost. She will only lie a sleeping bundle on my chest for so long. Her arms will grow beyond this swaddling. She will walk and talk, Lord willing someday she will stand tall beside me. Those days will be joy and promise realized. But these hours when she lays all-trusting in my arms, these are fleeting and they are a thin place where God shines through newborn soul.

She is only a few days old when I begin to fear losing her. Not the fear of pregnancy that her body would be lost, but a new fear – of the inevitable. I’m afraid I will not be able to withstand this time coming to a close.

As I sit quiet, hours on the couch with books and tea and her wrapped tight within my arms, I realize I am in a rushing torrent.

I am caught up in the swift river of time, and always have been.

Time is the thief coming to steal and destroy all I know and love. It will take all I hold dear away, even my own body.

And time is the medium through which God births beauty, growing, and relationship. Without time there would been no wedding day, no struggle, no choosing love, no pain of loss leading to breathless anticipation, no birth, no watching this daughter grow.

Ah time you are cruel and you are magic. I can not escape your swift current no more than I can ask the oceans and rivers pulsing through this planet not to be. All I can do is learn the lessons you teach, accept the gifts you bring, and let moments slip through my hands like water. Marveling at the sparkle instead of trying hopeless to stem the flood.

Someday I will step beyond time’s bounds. I can not pretend to know how that will feel, but I trust that the One who created this river and everything it holds has good plans.

For now I embrace and let go. I stand present in these precious newborn days and am washed along by the current to new beauty.

photos taken November 16, 2016