You don’t really appreciate the passage of time until something forces you to stand still and try to capture the minutes in a bottle. Something like, say, a newborn baby.
Jude is a month old now. Already, I am straining to remember the discomforts and anxieties leading up to his birth. I am forgetting how, just a few weeks ago, I sipped my morning coffee without him cradled in my arms. I can’t remember not knowing, always, that he was a he.
Time is flowing over me, swallowing the hours with every nursing session, every diaper change, every request of, “I hold baby Jude now?” On one hand, I’ve been more productive in the past week than I’ve felt in months– cooking full meals, seeing fingerprints on glass and taking a moment to wipe them away, actually enjoying the laundry routine and having the hamper empty by the end of every day. The flip side is that each stirring of my sweet, newborn son reminds me that this season is achingly, frighteningly short.
Today, we are celebrating John Mark’s seventh birthday. Since Jude has been born, we’ve marked two more: Jack is now 13, and Mathaus, 15. Each day has been a beautiful recognition of a growing, godly young man striving towards adulthood and reaching into a future that once upon a time, seemed unfathomable as I kissed his perfect baby toes and curled his tiny body into mine. Not so long ago, these were the baby boys on my shoulder.
But today, here, now, it is Jude. He is small, and needy, and smells like heaven. In the fleeting measure of time, I will have him like this only an instant. Before I know it, he will be seven. And just as I revel in the thrill of watching John Mark navigate the waters of “big boy,” I will delight in the Jude that will be then. Because even if you could freeze time, even if you could make everyone stand still … you wouldn’t. There’s too much joy in that growth, too many adventures in the journey. Time marches forward, and so do we.