I suppose I am not exactly mid-life quite yet. Is mid-life forty? Maybe forty-five? I'm not there yet. I'm thirty-four. I have at least a decade before mid-life is thrust upon me. Right?And if that's true, why then, all of a sudden, do I feel that life is passing me by way too fast? Life is too short. Too fleeting. Just a vapor. Our time on the Earth should not be the focus, and yet the Lord has given us these earthly bodies. And my earthly body doesn't want to say good bye to people I love.I think Cheryl's death is part of my current state. She was thirty-eight. She had an eight-year-old and a ten-year-old. She started her family at least three years before I did. (Thanks to infertility.)Our former Chaplain's wife, Deborah, is in her forties. She has a six-year-ol daughter. And she is dying. Out of the blue. When I met her last summer she was young and vibrant and full of life. And now cancer is ravaging her body. It was in November of last year that she discovered she had cancer. It seems so unfair.I don't think it is just news of these two women that has caused me to feel that life is spinning in directions I don't want it to spin. I think it goes deeper than that. I think becoming a parent has done this to me. I want to see my boys grow up. I want to be there for them. I don't want to watch them slip away as both Deborah and Cheryl's parents have been forced to do. I don't want to leave children behind without a mother.I think it is also hormones. It is having another baby. It is Joan leaving this morning. It is JB still being in Turkey. It is not living in America and making our home in the Middle East and then not being able to live there either. I am so weary of good byes. I cried last night just thinking of Joan going home. Of having to explain to my boys why she isn't here this morning. I cried as I dropped Joan at Frankfurt Airport. I don't want to keep saying good bye. I don't want to be so far away from our families.Don't get me wrong. We chose this life. We chose the military. We chose Turkey. I know that. We have friends who are dealing with separations far worse than ours. I recognize that our journey could be so much harder. We are altogether as a family. JB is working a job that while not perfect, offers good hours and excellent time with his family. I am aware of these things.But I just feel, all of a sudden, that life is too short. It feels too short to not be with my husband in Turkey right now. It feels too short in that the kids only get to see their grandparents a few days or weeks a year. They have not seen my Dad in a year. By the time they see JB's parents, it will be nearing a year and a half. (We are planning a European randevú with them in the fall.) What of their cousins and aunts and uncles? What of my house in Turkey? What of my bed? I just want to go home. I'm homesick for Turkey. And when I'm in Turkey, I'm homesick for the U.S. I don't know what I miss, but I miss it. I also know that getting back to the U.S. won't be happening anytime soon. Taking three kids across the world is just not a journey I am ready to undertake at this stage of their lives.And yes, I am having a third child in just over one week. I will have three children three and under depending on me for correction, discipline, guidance, assurance, stability. I look back on my parents. By the time they were my age, they had two children nearing their teens. They seemed so old to me back then. And now I am as old as they are and feeling completely ill-equipped to mold the lives the Lord has entrusted to me. And also so aware that these lives are only entrusted to me for a very infinitesimal period of time. Eighteen years is all I have to help mold them into the people they will become. That's not enough. Isaac is three. How did that happen? How have so many years already flown by?Much of this has been babbling. It's been floating around the surface of my thoughts for a few days now, and I finally had a few free minutes to sit down and pen it. Maybe someone can relate? Maybe someone has felt the same way? Maybe someone has some advice? Maybe someone (like my husband) will just blame my hormones. All I know is that it took forever to reach twenty-one. And it has seemed to take only a few moments for the next decade and a half to go zooming by. Just reminding us all, truly, to stop and smell the flowers. Aren't they beautiful?Matthew 19:29 "And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life."
12 comments:
Funny, I was sitting here just last night wondering how the heck Grace is almost 9? NINE!?!? I have no idea how that happened. And my "baby" is almost 6, so he's not really the baby anymore. And how exactly am I 34? Those 30's numbers always seemed so old to me when I was in my 20's. They still do. I don't feel 34- it sounds so old and mature. Time just really just goes by way to fast. I completely feel where you're coming from.
After awhile it seems like the years only have about 6 mos. in them... and you feel like yelling "Stop the world I want to get off!"
Hang in there Wendi, you are doing great and I am encouraged to hear that you get frustrated just like the rest of us!!! Praying all will go well with your little one's arrival!! How exciting!!!
I feel like that all the time! The days are really long but the weeks and months go by in a blur. I think good parents really understand how short the time really is--good parents constantly wonder if they are doing things well and feeding their children what they need for the long term. Thinking in terms of character and integrity and godliness is a great start. You have strength within you and supernatural strength from God to guide you. Keep on leaning on Him and it will come out right in the end.
Hey, Wendi! I know how you're feeling. Life seems to fly by everyday. I think it really hit me when my oldest daughter turned 30 last year. 30!!! Guess that means I must be getting old(er)!! It stills seems hard to believe as I don't feel my age. All we can do is enjoy every day to the max, don't spend too much time worrying about things, and keep smiling!
Goodbye's are always hard, but remember it's only for a short time, not something permanent. You will all be back together again before you know it. The worst goodbye is when your very best friend passes away, but we won't go there.
Looking forward to next saturday when your little girl arrives! Praying that it is uneventful and you both are strong and healthy.
Cheryl (Ontario, Canada)
Know what? It's all a matter of PERSPECTIVE and knowing the truth! Eternal life in Christ...teach your families to know HIM! And in that perspective, time becomes irrelevant; death becomes irrelevant; and each moment has meaning and purpose. Love those kids, my daughter! Truly, I would have done a lot of things different as a parent (if I had to do it over again.) But now it's irrelevant because I've never loved you more than I do right now! John too, LOL! and your kids? Oh God, how I love your kids! See you next week!
I can definitely sympathize. I have 4 kids but the span between them is almost 11 years. Every single time I see my 15 year old son holding my 4 year old daughter I am reminded that time flies by in the blink of an eye. It seems like yesterday I was taking my son (who is a rising sophomore in H.S.) to his first day of preschool, like I will be doing with my baby girl in September. Watching them grow and then letting them go is the hardest thing I have ever experienced!
Oh, I can relate, all too well. I have no advice, only empathy.
Time flies faster the older you become. My oldest is 14 today and she was my tiniest baby at 6 lbs 13oz.. I can empathize with you too. My baby just turned 6 in April and will be in 1st grade in the fall. Like someone else said, the days are long but the weeks and months are short.
Enjoy them and love them and take your time with them and learn from them and always remember to hug them goodnight.
Karen
Hey Wendi,
I have been pondering some of these same things. The fleeting time with our children and how it all goes by so quickly...the fact that 9 1/2 months are required for the Lord to weave together the child within the womb ( a miracle in itself) but that the difference between life on earth and in heaven can be separated by a mere breath ...in a matter of seconds. It makes you cherish the time and re-evaluate your priorities and how you spend it. But you are not alone in your feelings and I am praying for you during this time of physical and emotional transition.
I could have written this post myself. Since having my babies, I have really come to appreciate every day I am alive and able to care for them. I can't imagine leaving them, I just can't allow the thought. And so when we hear stories like your two friends, we are faced with the fact that those losses CAN happen. And that is just not acceptable! Kids make time fly by, huh?
And we are far away from our families, too. Every time someone visits and leaves, I cry. Not for me, but for my babies. They will not know their grandparents, aunts and uncles like we want them to. And that makes me so sad.
"Sehnsucht (pronounced [ˈzeːnzʊxt]) is a German noun translated as "longing", "yearning" and "craving"[1], or in a wider sense a type of "intensely missing". However, Sehnsucht is diffucult to translate adequately and describes a deep emotional state. Its meaning is somewhat similar to the Portuguese word, saudade... ...
Sehnsucht took on a particular significance in the work of author C. S. Lewis. Lewis described Sehnsucht as the "inconsolable longing" in the human heart for "we know not what." In the afterword to the third edition of The Pilgrim's Regress he provided examples of what sparked this desire in him particularly:
That unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World's End, the opening lines of "Kubla Khan", the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves.[3] ....In The Problem of Pain, Lewis focuses again on the apparent uniqueness of the object of each person's longing.
You have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw—but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported . . . All the things that have deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it—tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest—if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself—you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say 'Here at last is the thing I was made for.' We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want . . . which we shall still desire on our deathbeds . . . Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it—made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.
St Therese de Lisieux says of it: my heart’s most secret and deepest longings assured me that there was in store for me another and more beautiful country—an abiding dwelling place. " I think we can all relate...and many, like me, would have tears come to their eyes reading your beautiful expressions -cuz it is a universal longing we all feel...almost a beauty -and I do think it is for heaven...that is a comfort to me...this deep longing that comes over me -almost a nostalgia...is really for heaven...for which we were made and which we will live in, in new bodies, with those we love...no more goodbyes, no more sorrows...just all that beauty we are just getting a glimpse of here...I'm in a fight with cancer...I want to stay here with those I love...still as I take walks in the beautiful gardens out here something in me rises to try and grasp that the beauty around me is just a glimpse of all He has for His children...and He so wanted to have us experience it all with Him that He made provision for us to be His children through what Christ did!
love you so -love your writing dear niece! Sorry so long but you got me thinking... :) Tante Jan
oh by the way those quotes were from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sehnsucht
Tante Jan
Post a Comment