We celebrated our final "Grandparents/Special Friends Day" in elementary school today. How many have we enjoyed over the years, I wonder? So many, so gloriously many. I well remember taking my parents and my husband's parents to the very first one at Root Elementary when our oldest daughter was in first grade. Their smiling picture rests on a table in our den today. So many years ago--17 years, I believe. And we've been going ever since, with each precious child the Lord has given us. 17 years of memories, 17 years of handmade love gifts from lopsided ceramic birds to popsicle frames to brightly colored paintings. 17 years of lunches and visiting and laughing after the big event, 17 years of joy.
Those 17 years brought many changes--some wonderful, some sorrowful. Some years we had new little ones to add to the chaos and fun, new babies to hold and coo over and remark that "he looks just like his grandaddy!" or "her eyes are just like grandmamas!" Some years maybe it was a new home or a new job or a new pet or a new tooth to rejoice over and discuss.
But there were years like that first one after my dear Mama died, and Daddy, already ill with cancer, came without her--that was hard, bittersweet, but yet precious. To see his sweetness and his love for his grandchildren, even in his grief over losing such a vibrant, irreplaceable chunk of his heart, well, I'll never forget it. By the next Grandparents Day, Daddy had gone home to be with the Lord, joyously united forever with Mama, but leaving us to struggle that day as the hole left by them both seemed impossibly vast, never to be filled.
Yet, God always fills those empty places in our lives--maybe not in the same way, maybe always leaving a scar, but with His boundless grace that makes all things new and beautiful in their time. And so we soldiered on, enjoying the blessings of my husband's dear parents and at least one of my wonderful sisters coming for each Grandparents/Special Friends Day. Every year, with every child, some years having to cover several children on the same day in a fun frenzy. The years seem to stretch on and on.
Until today. The last one. Our youngest child "graduates" from lower school to middle school at the end of this month, and so suddenly all those years of Grandparents and my sisters and eating lunches and holding babies and dropping off at school and picking up and reminding of teacher's names and classmates' names and taking pictures of smiling faces at school... impossibly and suddenly finished.
It's so trite, but so true: where on earth did all those years go? Did we appreciate every single one of them enough? Did we see how precious, how never-to-be-repeated each one was? Did we see each for the irreplaceable gift that it was? Surely not, for none of us ever fully lives every single moment of our lives, never fully loves each priceless person in our lives, never fully experiences the gift of the "precious present" as we should. We try, but we're human, and we just can't.
We're too often focused on the next thing, the next day, the next problem, the next item on the to-do list, the next goal, to realize that life right now, right at this very moment is challenging and wonderful and glorious and passing by all too quickly. Often, it's not until it's over that we begin to appreciate the extravagant blessing of our loved ones, of each of our moments, of the simplest of our daily blessings of family, of work, of daily bread, of God's creation, of friends, of strength, of sight and smell and touch, of laughter, of tears.
Isn't it funny how the monotonous or the routine can dull us to the extraordinary blessings behind the routine? If the sun rose in all it's glory only every once and a while, we would be astounded at the wonder of it all--at the colors, at the fresh new start, at the new light and hope illuminating the morning! If we rarely glimpsed our baby's smile or heard our child's singing or hugged our sister, we would be overwhelmed with the astounding joy of it all. Folding the laundry and changing diapers and running carpools and cleaning the kitchen become luminously infused with the sacred when we recognize the irreplaceable loved ones prompting each duty and act of love. Loved ones who will not be with us forever and so must be appreciated and known and loved today, the only day we really have.
And so I thank You Lord for each and every Grandparents/Special Friends Day for the past 17 years. Thank You for the gift of children, of parents, of sisters and brothers, of husbands, of wives. Thank You for the gift of dedicated teachers and schools. Thank You for our problems for they drive us to You, and thank You for our blessings that remind us of Your goodness and grace. Thank You for love and laughter and life--and for the gift of living each day, one at a time, never to be repeated and never to be taken for granted.
Thank You most of all, Lord Jesus, for one day entering our time--our limited time of days and hours and minutes--as a helpless newborn baby. Thank You for laying aside Your infinite glory and honor and power and taking on our frail flesh and moving into our messy neighborhoods and teaching us what it is to love and live each day to the glory of God. And thank You, thank You, thank You, for saving us and giving us the gift of eternal life so that our days of worship and wonder will go on and on and on, no limitations, no losses. Only Love. Forever. To our Savior, our Lord of time and eternity, be all the glory forever and ever.
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