Time flies

You’d be 18 years old today. 

I’d like to say time flies. Because this is what you say when your child becomes an adult. 

But time doesn’t always fly. Not when you are missing someone. And never ever when you live with longing in the depths of your soul. 

There is something unfair about reaching this milestone of your 18th birthday. It’s supposed to be the official marker of bittersweet closure, this passage into adulthood and the gentle closing of the door on innocent youth. Instead, it’s a hurtful reminder of childhood ripped away, a chapter that ended way too abruptly, way too soon. 

Time doesn’t fly. It’s been a long and exhausting journey to get to today. 

This life can sure be drudgery. It can be luxury too, and I am grateful. For full grocery carts and overflowing laundry bins and dishes that I’m pretty sure were supposed to be washed by one of my children but wait for me in the sink nonetheless.

There are of course moments when time flies by way too fast. When experiencing the sunrise from a sailboat in the Mediterranean or watching my kids reel in massive king salmon from a remote river in the Alaskan wilderness. Those are times I want to freeze and hold on to forever. Drink them in and live off the sweetness and the depth. True gifts in what can quite frankly be a painful world. 

Time also flies in the busyness of a new school year and the changing of sport seasons and those times when you say wait, didn’t I just buy you new shoes. It’s hard to mark time when living in the weeks of practices and meal planning and endless bedtime routines. But one day you look back and realize you aren’t reading bedtime stories anymore and also why are you so tall and old and stinky?  

But time, however, virtually stands still when waiting for the doctor to find you after the procedure or while obsessively checking your patient portal for the blood work results. And it stops altogether when standing over your child’s grave and looking at endless years of having to survive without him. 

I have learned there is beauty in these unwelcome moments. They remind me this isn’t my home. They take my eyes off of temporary comforts and open up my heart’s deep longing for eternity. For completion and perfection and redemption. 

So maybe some imaginary childhood door on some other life just closed shut and it’s ok to take the time to grieve that. It’s ok to be sad and say I would have really, really liked that other story instead. The one where I got to see you lose your first tooth and score your first goal and get your drivers license. (Not to glamorize anything. I do realize you would have also grown up to be a sinner like the rest of us and would have made bad decisions and forgot to do your chores and would sometimes even think I’m the absolute worst mom ever…)

But ultimately it’s about submitting to the Author of the best story and knowing that he writes better than I ever could. And even though I passionately hate some of these chapters in the middle I know I will still arrive at the ending and realize it’s a story that surpasses my grandest imagination. And if he can use my story to get even more people to that perfect ending then that is a pretty great thing too. 

So yeah, time doesn’t exactly fly by. Not when we really need it to. But I suppose that’s all part of the Author’s intent as well. Because it’s in the darkest and most painful chapters of our lives where he writes the most beautiful redemption. When we groan “Come on already!” He says “Take heart, I’ve got something really good coming…”

Sometimes it’s hard to recognize there is anything good in grief and pain and cancer and loss and living this life on earth that seems to stretch on and on at times. I guess that’s where faith comes in. Knowing that people long before me saw things and welcomed them from afar. And their faith is counted among the greats of Hebrews 11. And that is ultimately where I want to be. Confident in hope and assured of what I do not see. 

So, Mason, if earthly birthdays are even a thing in the majesty and perfection of heaven, I hope you are celebrated well. (Actually, if I’m being honest I hope you aren’t aging one little bit and I get to experience you in all your 6-year-old glory on that delightful day that God finally calls me home.) I imagine you in that great cloud of witnesses understanding the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. And while I didn’t get to experience the full chapter of your childhood here on this earth I’m grateful for the pages I did get and how the rest of those unwritten pages make me long for eternity in a way I never would have without the reality of losing you.

So here I am on this day that would be your 18th birthday and rather than wondering at the adult you would have become, I instead think of the adult I have become. One with so much more clarity and faith and purpose and assurance of things hoped for. 

And while one door very unexpectedly and abruptly closed on your childhood, one also very beautifully and unexpectedly opened for me.  

The loss of you brought me a glimpse. Of all that awaits. 

So today, I fix my eyes on what is unseen. And I celebrate you.

Happy 18th birthday sweet boy.