Time is fleeting {a life update}

The morning sun filters through the trees and illuminate the dandelion whisps. The world comes to life as bird song floats on the breeze. Our puppy has me up and out early these days (yes! we got a golden retriever puppy in january. he's 8 months old now. stay tuned, i'm sure he will get his own post). And while my quiet time isn't so solitary anymore, I am forced to be more present. 

Our family is in transition yet again, though we are grateful we don't have to move this time! Transitions always make me more reflective, so I needed to write. Also, the world is absurd right now. An election year. An assasination attempt on a former president. My firstborn spending his summer working at Delanco Camp in New Jersey. A friend calling to tell me about a scary diagnosis. A couple new jobs. Starting my counseling practicum in the fall. It's a lot. 

My mind swirls... How is Caleb old enough to spend a summer away from us? How has our country gotten to the position we are in? How will all of my various roles and responsibilities fit together this year? How does God invite us to navigate suffering? And how exactly do we slow the onslaught of time? And then my mind returns to Ann Voskamp's words: 

“This, this is the only way to slow time: 
When I fully enter time’s swift current, enter into the current moment with the weight of all my attention, I slow the torrent with the weight of me all here. I can slow the torrent by being all here. I only live the full life when I live fully in the moment…. 
Weigh down this moment in time with full attention, and the whole of time’s river slows, slows, slows.” 

I slow time when I give this moment my full attention. I turn off auto-pilot. I put down my phone. I single-task, instead of multi-task. And 'Cease endlessly striving for what you would like to do and learn to love what must be done.' -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

I long to live a quiet, ordinary one-piece-life. Where all the pieces are woven together. Where my spirituality and family, work and play are all intertwined. As we sit in ordinary time in the liturgical year, I am practicing gratitude for what has been given and all that lies ahead. It will be beautiful, even when it is hard, because God is a good Maker and a kind Father.