I had a startling realization yesterday as I was driving Mary Hannah home from a ministry commitment at a local senior living facility:
January is almost over.
And by almost over, I mean it’s in its final hours. Thursday is opening day for February. All of this begs a very real question— what on earth happened to January? Where did it go?
I remember in early childhood the space between my birthday (mid-October) and Thanksgiving was agonizing. I couldn’t grasp what my mother meant when she said that the holidays “snuck up on me” or that she couldn’t believe it was time for my bi-annual dental cleaning again. What was wrong with this woman that she seemed oblivious to the passage of time? How could she not feel the weight of every passing day, especially since they moved like molasses?
Things picked up steam in college, and by the time I was in my early twenties— newly married, a young mother— I felt the hours slipping through my hands at a much faster pace. But can I be honest? Hitting 40 seems to have jammed the accelerator, and now entire months are hurtling by me at a rate I find almost dizzying.
The thing is, I can tell you a hundred things that happened in January. It’s not that I wasn’t there, living it, tasting every second. But by golly, it didn’t feel like a whole month, no matter how busy it was. It felt like one day, then another, and another after that.
Which is, of course, the way of it. Unless we’re working towards a milestone, or keeping track of something particular, time is almost frighteningly irrelevant to how we live. It just is. And so we keep moving.
I suspect that the bulk of this year will feel as incorporeal as its first month. I fully expect that I will be pinching myself in May and asking how Jude could possibly be 3 years old, and shocked in June to find that Mathaus’ senior year of high school has come to a close. The end of summer will creep up on me while I’m still basking in the sweet taste of spring’s sugar snap peas. And then it will be Christmas again, and I’ll have to come to terms with the fact that 2018 is fading into 2019.
Time will keep rolling over me, and I’ll keep missing it as it presses past. Keep that in mind and check the date line if I ever have to write you a check.