redeeming the time with Tay...

I'm in the coffee shop with my youngest offspring, Taylor. She is sitting at a table across from me to my left. I'm against the wall because the battery on my computer dies abruptly if it's not plugged into an outlet. I'm sipping some good strong coffee and eating a yummy pastry. The sun is bursting throught the windows and the sky is as blue as I've seen it in months.

Yesterday there was a sunrise that made you stop in your tracks and get lost in a stare of worship. Hues of purple and orange and red and yellow were dancing together on the horizon glowing brightest at the center where the sky met the earth's surface. I gathered the girls together as they were getting dressed and directed them toward the beauty. I find it important to direct them toward beauty...to teach them to lust for it and live fueled by it. I love to remind them of how great a God could be that makes such glorious things. A God who thought up color schemes and trees and atmosphere and dust particles that catch light and reflect it in such a plethora of brush strokes that it makes even the most accomplished artist bow in reverence.

But here I sit. Looking across the room at my little darling coloring Disney pictures. She is sipping my coffee now that it's cooled down. She's on her knees in her chair weilding her crayons like Gwynnevere her sword. Her eye's are wide with joy, her little voice echo's off the hardwood floor and the sheetrock walls...it has the purity of sound that few things possess. She's learning to stay in the lines...that is quite an accomplishment to a 4 year old. I hope she doesn't stay in the lines with her life.

I hope she lives outside those boxes of limitation imposed upon us by the machine of society. I hope she "rages against the machine". I hope she doesn't lose her passion to see beyond prescribed perspectives. As I watch her now, she is so lost in her own world of wonder. Just watching her living in it takes me there. I get to enter the Wonderland portal right behind her. I get to visit Oz drafting behind her little heart. I follow her into the Wardrobe and into her own little Narnian world of joy and innocence and imagination. Her eyes are sparkling with the remaining remnants of childlike pleasure...I'm sad to say that I can already see parts of it leaking out of her heart. When the awareness of the "System" sets in...another part of her heart spills out onto the floor...I hate watching it. Sometimes I try to stop it...and I can be successful to a degree, but it's overwhelming and eventually overcoming.

Her face shines. Her little fingers still learning to control erratic movements and shed palsy motions accosiated with toddler motor skills. Her little legs prop her up and serve as stilts to push her body up and over the table top so that she can look down on her masterpiece. Her feet are adorned with little boots and her legs are covered with brown leggings that hug the shape of her pudgy little legs that are loosing the baby fat and stretching to take shape. Our little baby is becoming a little girl...soon, and very soon, we are going to have a little woman on our hands. Oh, God, no.

This season of life will be in the review mirror before I can say, "Redeem the time", and I will be looking back with the 20/20 vision of wishful thinking wondering why I didn't make more of the moments I had. But as I write this, I'm in the moment that I will one day look back upon. I'm smack dab in the middle of this day that will one day be a distant memory. And the memory of tomorrow is the story of today.

So I will live in the story today. Bask in it. Soak in it.

My daughter just looked across the room and smiled at me.

What a story this is turning out to be.

Comments

Michael said…
Hey Jason,

I enjoy reading your blog, you have a good mix of funny as well as thought provoking insights.

Oh, by the way, this is Michael from the Cornerstone group.

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