Reflections

LORD, remind me how brief my time on earth will be.

Remind me that my days are numbered— how fleeting my life is.

You have made my life no longer than the width of my hand.

My entire lifetime is just a moment to you; at best, each of us is but a breath.

We are merely moving shadows, and all our busy rushing ends in nothing.

We heap up wealth, not knowing who will spend it.

And so, Lord, where do I put my hope? My only hope is in you.

Psalm 39: 4-7

May is a month of reflection. Mother’s Day comes every May and causes us, as moms, to look at our role and wonder when that day will come when our kids will rise up and call us blessed. Or maybe we wonder when they will figure out that we are the ones, primarily, that gave them life and kept them alive; that we are their biggest cheerleaders; their biggest prayer warriors; perhaps the ones that have taught them some of the most important life lessons. We wonder what we have left undone as they walk out the door. We pray that the seeds we planted in them will find root and grow strong. We fear that the world will snatch them away from us before we are ready to let go and panic at the notion that they will get off the right path.

May is also a month of when we send them off to prom, dressed as adults, with high hopes that they will have the maturity to behave as such. It is the month when we watch them graduate and consider all we have taught them and all we wish we still had the time to teach. It is the time when they look, with longing, to an unseen future as though it were simply an adventure. All the while, we are terrified that we have failed to help them develop appropriate values and wonder if we have, perhaps, misused the 18 years we had in which to “grow” them.

This fall I will celebrate 40 years of being a mother, and I can tell you that all the hoping and wondering hasn’t stopped. I have four kids that are pretty amazing adults, but I still find myself wondering if I could have done more, taught more, prayed more, shaped more so that they are ready to be the best possible parents for my grandkids!!! Did I let them down? Occasionally. Did I do the best I knew to do? Mostly. Are the seeds planting still growing decades later? I certainly pray that is true.

Life gets so crazy busy when we are raising our kids. We find ourselves racing from one event to the next wondering if we even remembered to feed them and hoping nobody finds out that we didn’t! In all the hustling around, we often forget that all that we do in this life isn’t even about this life. When we decide to be followers of God and seek to do as He directs, everything we do, teach, learn, gain, etc… is not about the here and now, but about the kingdom God is building in the hearts of His people.

So, as you are doing your reflecting on the time you are investing in your kids, remember, as did King David, that this life is but a vapor, but the next lasts forever. Make sure that you are saying “No” enough that you can have time to say the best “Yes.”  Look at your calendar and discover if it is so full of … everything… that you don’t have time to prepare them to live a life that will extend into eternity.

And while you are at it, take some time to look at your finances and see how well you are teaching them that life isn’t about gaining more, but it is the giving that matters in the end. Help them to see that it isn’t all about them, but about serving and loving others.

And teach them that anything that goes against what Jesus taught us to do is sin and, because sin destroys, they should run from it as fast and as far as they can. Help them learn to love the Word that shows us who God is. Teach them that it is the best way to find their way… all the way to the end of their lives here on this earth.

Teach well. Love well. Demonstrate Godly living well. Be the very best you can be for God’s glory and for the benefit of generations to come. Someday you will be looking back and wondering if you did all you could have done to guide them. I pray that you will be able to at least answer, “Mostly.”

Remember, our only hope is Jesus. Hang on tightly to Him because those kids, at least for now, are following you!