Are You Missing the Gift of the Present?

Why are we always living in the past or the future, when life is happening in the present?

"Yesterday is gone.  Tomorrow has not yet come.  We only have today.  Let us begin." 
             - Mother Teresa

My thoughts seem to encompass yesterdays and tomorrows.  The mistakes or missed opportunities of yesterday and the "to do list" or anticipation of tomorrow. 

My babies, who refuse to be called babies now, will only be this little once.  Too soon they will have grown, changed, learned new things, experienced new adventures, and this time will be gone.  Forever. Motherhood is odd, the years are short, but the days, sometimes they drag on.  

Only this winter will Silas say "tractor" the cute way he does and refer to ALL fish as Nemo.  Only once will I get to teach him what noises the animals make.  Next year he will have lost his little baby face. 

Only this winter will Taegan be so proud to show me how she can write her name by herself or work a 24 piece puzzle.  Already her legs and longer, her face is thinner, changed forever from the toddler she was last year. 

God is right here in this moment.  In these four walls that sometimes seem to be closing in.  His grace, it surrounds us.  

The boring mundane moments are so much more.  Our Facebook and Instagram accounts trick us into believing our lives are boring compared to everyone else's that somehow we're missing out on what the world has to offer.  

That just isn't true.  Somewhere between fixing meals, wiping butts, cleaning up toys, playing play-doh, coloring, painting, swinging, blowing bubbles, doing laundry, reading stories, giving bathes...we are shaping these little people into who they will become.  We are more.  More than maids, cooks, taxi drivers, boo boo kisser...we are writing the future.  Molding the clay the Potter so graciously handed us.  

The reality is unnerving, we're given eighteen short years, 6,570 long days, to teach our children everything they need to know.

The snuggles and bedtime talks...teach them they are loved and they can always talk to you and you will listen. 

The discipline we give them today...will shape them into the adults they will become. 

They are little sponges (and that thought is frightening) they soak up all we pour out.  Am I teaching them all they need to know?  That they are loved beyond measure, not only by me and their Dad, but more importantly by God, how to not only survive but thrive in this big scary world.  

I am so grateful for the forgetting grace of children.  They forgive and they forget and sometimes I hope I can get it all together before I run out of that forgetting grace, they repeatedly give me. 

God lives in the present.  When he revealed himself to Moses, He said "I Am Who I Am" (Exodus 3:14).  He didn't say, who I will be or who I was. We must seek Him in the present. 

Living in the present brings you the greatest peace.  No regrets, no worries, just dwelling with God in the here and now.  It makes you aware of all the blessings you have, the little hidden blessings, you'd otherwise overlook.  It also makes you more prepared for the future because you are allowing God to prepare you for it instead of trying to do it yourself, which only fosters anxiety and worry. 

So..seize the day, the little things matter.  Seek God and He will reveal Himself to you.