My stepson is graduating 6th grade this week.
In a minute, he will be graduating 12th. I’ve heard how it works.The baby years crawl, the elementary years walk, and from 7th grade on, you blink your eyes and they are walking out the door.
Wasn’t it yesterday that he was wearing a miniature tux and baby teeth and making me a mom?
And I think it was about an hour ago that he still fit snugly in my lap.
But in the last five minutes, he grew out of every pair of jeans, sung a solo in baritone voice, played a self taught medley in a talent show, and recently moved into the next aisle of a department store because he didn’t want to be seen with me.
In a couple of seconds, he’ll be in high school and I’ll be lucky to get him in the same store.
Then poof. He’ll be a man.
Time may move slow for a lot of things, but when it comes to children and happiness, life goes speeding by.
So I want to take a minute here on the eve of his sixth grade graduation, and savor.
Maybe you have a moment you want to savor too. So in this blog I want to give you:
5 TIPS WHEN LIFE IS SPEEDING BY
1. Take a mind picture. I’m not kidding, it works. Stare at the scene you want to remember. Shut your eyes and see it in your mind. Repeat this process three times. It’s locked! (However, If middle age memory lapse has set in, keep a backup on your cell phone)
2. Say what you are thinking, even if it’s mushy, or corny, or produces eye rolling. You’ll regret it more if you don’t.
3. SAVOR the moment. Taste it. Feel it. Linger in it. You may not be able to stop time, but you can avoid focusing on the petty distractions that keep you from being in the moment you have.
4. Journal what you notice or feel. My husband has been logging “Jordanisms” since we got married. Now we laugh and cry when we read them.
5. Keep a box of pictures, poems and other paraphernalia. One. Not ten. You won’t look through ten boxes, but believe me you will look through one. And when you go through stuff, keep the tissues handy. As I did when I came across this:
(If you can’t read it, you can find it on p.157 of Finding Faith in the Dark. And if that isn’t a sales plug, I don’t know how much pushier more compelling I can get)
Grab the moments while you have them. They are what make your life.
This advice is so precious; even though our memory aids have been improved with videos etc. through which we can record certain milestones, there are so many events and sayings in our children’s lives that we need to write down or just make a point of remembering vividly. All of this is very important and I make sure I practice it for there is not one moment of my precious son and daughter’s lives that I am prepared to throw away.