living carefully in every season

"Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom" (Psalm 90:12).

Today I am folding and storing away Abraham's summery six-month-old clothes. He's grown, the season has changed, and it's time to get out his cooler-weather six-to-nine-months and nine-month-old clothes and hang those up.

I've resisted doing this for the last few weeks. I know it's time to let go of summer and embrace the autumn, but this season went too quickly for my taste. Then too, it is hard to believe that Abraham fits better into nine-month-old clothes than three-month-old clothes. But I suppose that is what happens when your baby boy is eighteen pounds at four months.

I read something recently about how necessary it is to let go of what God has given you in the past if you are to receive more for the future. I know it's important to hold blessings with an open hand, yet the insight is particularly poignant to me today. I see it even in small things: If I cling to the past blessings of Abraham's adorable-but-now-too-small clothes, there will be no room in his closet for the current and future blessings of clothes that fit just right.

It is the same with every other blessing of phases and seasons. My children grow so quickly. I love each phase with them so much. I treasure each week's changing challenges and joys to the utmost, and I know it is good and right for them to keep growing and changing just as each season must also ripen into the next. Yet I can't help crying a bit as my little ones keep getting bigger. At nine pounds and four ounces, Abraham was hardly a tiny newborn, yet he is practically double that weight now. I miss his comparative tinyness. He has developed so many new abilities in the last month, and while I am delighted by those, I miss his newbornness and I am keenly aware that these next months of his infancy will pass as quickly as the last ones have.

I'm sure we have all heard more experienced parents say many times to treasure these days with our little ones, because they will pass all too fast. That realization is affecting me so strongly just now. Keith and I have made the choice to raise our children in ways that enable us to be with our little ones as much as possible, always teaching them, always guiding them, always enjoying them. But even when I am with them constantly, the time still flies, and before I know it, they have moved into another new phase. I am continually astonished to realize that the time spent with them in the last phase was always just barely enough, even when it seemed like it absorbed every waking minute. Those newborn days and nights can feel like an eternity, yet in a flash they are gone. The opportunities and frustrations of each season are gone forever, and yet my choices in them are cemented and cannot be changed.

The sermon at church last week centered on Ephesians 5:15-17, and it seems to me an incredibly fitting verse for where my heart and mind are focused this month: "Be very careful, then, how you live - not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is" (italics mine).

I want to live these days as a young mama purposefully. Every single one of them. I want to be very careful to pray with and for my children and my husband every day. I want to model graciousness, love, faithfulness, gentleness, and joy. (And I am learning that I cannot teach these things if they don't exist in me!) I want to play with my children and sing and make music in my heart to the Lord. I want to redeem the time given in every season. I want to live out the words of Colossians 3:16 - "Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God." I don't want to be foolish and let these days slip away uncultivated.

My sweet ones are sleeping now, and so I will spend a bit of time in the Word and finish hanging up Abraham's clothes. But that is where my mind is today, and that is what my heart is pondering this week, and so I wanted to share.

"Be very careful, then, how you live - not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Ephesians 5:15-20).