All From Abundance - Vol. #008

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The Time We Have Left

A few weeks ago, we took one final family trip to Wrightsville Beach to cap off our summer. We were sitting in a long line of traffic waiting to leave the island after a day packed full of all our favorite things. As we often do, we had Forest Frank blaring through the speakers - soaking in the perfect moment inside a perfect setting. I looked in the rear view mirror and watched as our son and daughter sang along together to his new single “Lemonade.”

It briefly turned into one of those semi-out-of-body moments where an older, future version of me was standing outside the car looking inside at the present version of me. I don’t know what it was about that particular moment, but so many things hit me all at once:

• There will be a time when both of our kids will be way too cool to sing together in the backseat of our car. Eventually, car rides will turn into quiet trips with each of them doing their own thing, not wanting to be bothered by the other.
• There will be a time - likely a lot sooner than I realize - where neither of them will want to be seen in the car with us. Friday nights spent riding to Sweet Frog together will soon turn into dropping them off at high school football games with their friends, which will then turn into riding to high school football games with their friends.
• There is a finite number of times left that our little family of four will have moments and experiences like this together. It can be hard to remember what life was like before we became a family of four - it feels like it’s all we know. But that won’t always be the case. One day, sharing dinner together around a table will be something we look forward to with anticipation for weeks in advance.

The reality of it all made it a bittersweet end to an otherwise perfect weekend. It was a humbling moment, yet one I’m also grateful to have had. It caused me to pause and reflect on the short amount time we have with our children under our care.

I sat on that thought for a few days and knew I didn’t want it to be something that was impactful in that moment, only to fade into the background once our regular schedules picked back up. I wanted something tangible to remind myself to cherish each of these moments we have together as a family - not only the fun beach adventures or vacations, but also the ordinary and mundane moments of sitting in traffic together, building a Lego set around the kitchen table, or listening to them laugh on the trampoline together as the sun sets in the distance.

It was then that a particular passage of Scripture came to mind:

Now, I’m not the first to literally number my days. There are many blogs and articles written about the practice, and you can buy an actual calendar that helps you with it. But instead of creating a visual to show how much time I have left in a hypothetical 90-year lifespan, I wanted something that zooms in on how much time I realistically have remaining with each child at home before they presumably head off to college.

That led to me spending a few minutes creating this:

• Each individual box represents a 7-day week.
• The colored box in the top row indicates when each child was born.
• The lines shaded in gray indicate the weeks they have lived so far — this time is gone and I can’t get it back.
• The white boxes are the number of weeks they have left at home before they presumably leave for college based on their current age and grade.
• For Kennedy, the box outlined in orange in Year 15 indicates the time Grayson will presumably leave our home to head off to college - at which point there will only be three of us under the same roof.
• Each Monday, I shade in the box for the prior week, inching one box closer to all of them being filled.

This has become my new bookmark in my Bible. I want to see it every morning as a reminder to make the most of every single day with them. I look at it for a few seconds and then recite the prayer written at the bottom:

“Lord, Help me to soak up every single day with Grayson and Kennedy, and to never speed a single one of them up or wish a single one of them away.”

The second part of this is another sheet I keep right behind it. It’s a reminder for me to not only be aware of the time we have left with them, but to also make the most of that time.

The purpose is not to look back at the previous week and pull out something that happened and write it down. Rather, it's to look ahead and ask myself, “What intentional moment do I want to have with them this week?”

While I’m sure there will be some family vacations and milestone celebrations captured on these pages along the way, my hope is that it will primarily be filled with ordinary and uneventful moments — the type we often overlook and don't fully realize how much we’ll want back one day.

I admit - it feels a bit cheesy to have a system to remind me to enjoy time with my kids (though anyone who knows me knows I have a system for everything). But it’s also important enough for me to have a system wrapped around it so that I don’t let life get in the way and lose sight of how quickly time can slip away.

I’m not at all saying that you need to go through this exact same exercise - my response to the moment in the car a few weeks ago may be completely different than what yours would have been. However, I would encourage you to create space to slow down, to realize how little of both your life and your child’s life is actually spent together in the same physical location, and to commit to being intentional about pursuing and elevating the ordinary, everyday moments that take place throughout the week.

Because there will come a time when they're no longer everyday moments.

-Tanner

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One More Thing...

• Song: Dusty Bibles by Josiah Queen - This song has been playing on repeat inside our home the past few days. Take a minute to dwell on these lyrics. Can't think of a song more fitting in light of the events of this past week.

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Until next time,

-Tanner and Brittany

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