And the Wind Died Down

So, I lost favorite child status today.  You laugh, but in a family with four children there is always the running joke of who the favorite child is at that moment. 

It reminds me of a little plaque I bought my mom for Christmas one year.  It was this wooden red apple that read “Please be Patient and take a number” with four numbers attached to its stem.  I wrote a little card alongside it telling my mom this might help her quiet us down when we all spoke over one another.

Any multi-sibling household is constantly full of noise, arguments, competition, jokes and mayhem and chaos. :-) 

As I sit in the hospital with my mama it’s made me think a lot about my childhood.  Nostalgia goes hand in hand with taking care of loved ones.  I’ve thought about when you scrape your knee and your mom cleans the wound.  Of when you and your older brother get in to a fight over the remote and she sends you to your room.  Of when your little brother gets caught doing Power Ranger Karate on you and strangling you in the living room…..errr…umm…was this only my family? 

It’s made me think about how life is a journey.  A journey we don’t get to stop.  We’re constantly walking whether we like it or not.  No amount of hoping for a moment to breath will change the fact that life keeps turning, years keep going by…and it’s our job what we do with those moments, how we take care of ourselves and who we spend those moments with.  Our actions always have a reaction.

Last night my little brother and I spent the night taking care of our mom.  Until around 2:00 my little brother and I stood on either side of our mom and helped keep her calm. Around 2:30 she began to calm down and we both lay down by her bed.  About an hour later we woke up to help calm her again.  But something happened…my little brother jumped up before me as I said, “You got it, Jim?”  He nodded.  I watched him take great care of my mom and every now and again I would get up and help him.  Around 5:00 he looked at me and said “Were you able to get a little sleep?”  My heart smiled.  The little boy who was caught strangling me, pouring milk in my hair, putting vinegar in my apple juice (both bothers get credit for this), and my ever favorite cutting my ponytail straight off my head before my sixth grade year had stood by my mom that much longer trying to allow me to get a bit more sleep.

 

Life is a journey.  Relationships change.  Roles change.  Favorite child status changes day to day ;) We are fearfully and wonderfully made.  God knows our every move and thought and desires for us to experience each moment and treat ourselves kindly.  We don’t get any moment back. 

My prayer today is obviously healing for my mama and rest for my families minds and spirits.  But it’s also for you: wherever you are, that you remember each moment we walk through is just that…a passing moment.  I hope you are surrounded by and doing the things you love and believe to be God’s best for you.  Because either way…time keeps going.  There’s no need to be afraid either way. You might as well live in to the joy we were created to experience.  

“Take courage it is I! Do not be afraid.  Then he climbed in the boat with them and the wind died down.”  Mark 6:50-51