Moments

A lifetime is made of events strung together and dotted with a figurative black spot on a metaphorical timeline. The things we choose to tell someone when they ask who we are, what we've done. We can whittle our entire existence down to a few phrases.


Raised in southern California in a close knit family. Born again Christian. Competitive swimmer. Good student. Theatre enthusiast. High school graduate. College graduate. Wife. Infertile. Survivor of the adoption process. Mom times two. Pastor's wife.


But those things are not where the real living happens. The real living is in the moments strung together by the biography. The brief seconds of an event that we choose to remember.


Life is when Matthew is 90% asleep and 10% groggy and he snuggles into my body and sighs. He knows he is safe and comfortable. I know that I am deeply in love with him and that surviving the adoption process was worth every painful second.


Life is the sound of a hush falling over an audience as I wait to take my place on the darkened stage.


Life is a moment camping with a dear friend I didn't even know existed three years ago. A friend who needed the Lord and now has Him. A friend who apologizes when she asks a Bible question, thinking, mistakenly, that it's a burden. A friend who doesn't yet grasp that talking about our shared faith is my favorite thing about our relationship.


Life is when Garrett forgets that he calls me mom now and let's mama slip. 


Life is realizing that I can't actually remember walking down the aisle but I can vividly recall the moment just before, when the doors opened and my not so future husband was standing at the end. 


Life is realizing that I can remember exactly what the material of my father's tuxedo felt like on my arm.


Life is being so mad at my rambunctious puppy, for ripping my couch to shreds, that I can't even see straight. Life is that same puppy looking at me through old eyes surrounded by a graying face as he lies at my feet.


Life is meeting my friends in the cafeteria between classes and some way, somehow, remembering what it smelled like all those years ago.


Life is the memory of feeling my lungs fill with a familiar ache and knowing that I won't die before I touch the wall. It's remembering what that cool water felt like as it rushed past my limbs. It's turning to look at the board and being elated. Or not.


Life is the moment when a professor said something profound and, in some way, shaped my world.


Life is the morning that the pregnancy test was positive.


Life is knowing that God has just revealed Himself.


Life is the feeling I had when my body went numb as I listened to the voice mail telling me we'd been chosen by a mother to raise her child.


Life is water and laughter and tears and sweat and hugs and friendship and love and anguish and pride and joy and despair. It is measured in moments. In moments that I wish never happened. In moments I long to relive. In moments of nostalgia and moments of anticipation.


A lifetime is made of events strung together and dotted with a figurative black spot on a metaphorical timeline. But life is so much more than that. Life is the moments we simply cannot forget.