Reflections at 34

I woke up early this morning, earlier than normal.
I usually like to wake up before I get the kids up just to have a few moments to sit with my coffee, the morning sun and with Jesus. I have a nice little nook on my sofa by my front window which is my go-to spot for reading, praying and sipping :)

On this here day, my birthday, I woke up extra early... which seems silly. Wouldn't one want to sleep in on their birthday? A friend, jokingly, asked if Lucy was going to wake up early and make me breakfast... and my only thought was "Forget breakfast! PLEASE don't wake up early, kids!!!" 

I love my children... but I love moments of quiet and serenity. Maybe my kids and their lack of quietness have increased that love within me :) Who knows.


All of that to say - this morning I woke up a good 45 minutes to an hour before I normally do just to allow myself some extra time to sit and pray and read and sip and reflect.

I even allowed myself 2 Trader Joe's chocolate chip dunking cookies with my coffee. Party over here!

But in this quiet time my mind kept wandering to the 34 years prior to this day. I have always been a nostalgic person. I have always loved to reminisce and re-live, if only in photos and memories, the moments of my past. I do dwell in the past I suppose, but not in a negative way. I am so, so thankful for so many moments in my past.

An example of this can be found in the events of this last weekend. We had a little picnic back home to celebrate 15 years since graduating high school. I love those types of celebrations. I joked with my classmates, in reference to others from our class that have no desire to join in on the reunions, how that is so counter to my nature. I literally can't wrap my mind around not wanting to reunite! :) I love to see and talk to people who I did life with for so much of my childhood and adolescence. I love to sit and remember all those things we did together. And it is inevitable that at some point in these moments of remembering something deep inside me yearns to be able to go back, even if just for a moment or for a glimpse. I want life to be like a movie, where the picture gets wavy and fuzzy and then you are living again in that past memory, not just thinking about it.

I try not to verbalize this TOO much or to TOO often as.... I don't think many people carry this intense love of the past that I do...and I think many find it quite strange! :) 

But none-the-less, this is where I found myself reflecting early in the morning on August 3 - the past.
I don't mind the age. I don't mind the gray hairs. Usually I don't mind the wrinkles starting to form. okay, yes I do. What I hate the most about getting older is that every year... really every day and month something is coming to an end. This is what I find the hardest about growing old.

These thoughts brought to mind a quote that is often bouncing around in my head by the incomparable C.S Lewis as he refers to the strangeness of these feelings of eternity in a world and within a life that is marked with endings and nothing ever being eternal. He says:

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world" 

This is so very true in me. The feeling to live in the past as well as the present is quite insatiable. It was just yesterday Lucy was a baby - and I look at her now and she is a little girl, and I know in a blink of an eye she will be an adult! I joke that I still feel like that 17 year girl in high school, or the 22 year old living in Spain. I long for summer days playing at my parents and lat nights laughing with my sister long after we should be asleep in bed. I don't feel 7 years removed from that first day of teaching when students who grew to be friends first walked into my cubicle-of-a-classroom. Those moments are in the past... but to me the past is such a part of my present I can't come to grips with it being so long ago.

This all must sound so strange and so looney! 


I remember when my mom would come pick me up from my cousin's house I never wanted to go. We would beg for the fun to continue
"Can Kristin come sleep over"
"Can I sleep over here"
"Can we stay and play"

And my mom, being the Sandi Patti fan that she was, would inevitably sing her answer
"Another time and another place"

That was a "no".

My nature is one that hates change, hates the passing of time and longs to live timelessly.
As C.S Lewis emphasizes... I was indeed built for another time and another place... eternity.

"A wish may lead to false beliefs, granted. But what does the existence of the wish suggest? At one time I was much impressed by Arnold's line, 'Nor does the being hungry prove that we have bread.' But surely, tho' it doesn't prove that one particular man will get food, it does prove that there is such a thing as food! i.e: if we were a species that didn't normally eat, weren't designed to eat, would we feel hungry? You say the materialist universe is 'ugly'. I wonder how you discovered that! If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it that you don't feel at home there? Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures? Notice how we are perpetually surprised at time. ('How time flies!) In heaven's name, Why? Unless, indeed, there is something in us which is not temporal" 
-C.S Lewis  


Well, that's all. My one request for my birthday - all those who may text or post on my facebook wall or by some long shot read this blog post and comment - with your "Happy Birthday" could you add in a memory from the past? Just anything that pops into your head that we experienced together.
Thanks in advance for indulging my nostalgia ;)