Ghosts Trying to Hold the World

Any parent in the world will easily relate to the following:

"Parents in love with their kids are all amnesiacs, trying to remember, trying to cherish moments, ghosts trying to hold the world. Being mortals, having a finite mind when surrounded by joy that is perpetually rolling back into the rear view is like always having something important on the tips of our tongues, something on the tips of our fingers, always slipping away, always ducking our embrace.

No matter how many pictures we take, no matter how many scrapbooks we make, no matter how many moments we invade with a rolling camera, we will die. We will vanish. We cannot grab and hold. We cannot smuggle things out with us through death. . .

But this shouldn’t inspire melancholy; it should only tinge the sweet with the bitter. Don’t resent the moments simply because they cannot be frozen. Taste them. Savor them. Give thanks for that daily bread. Manna doesn’t keep overnight. More will come in the morning."

N.D. Wilson, Death by Living (107)

I constantly find myself trying to capture moments with Owen and Eleanor. Trying to remember the first time they did this or that thing (the feeling is more intense with Owen since he is older and therefore more active). Yesterday in the afternoon I was putting my shoes on to go out to the backyard and play with him. He already had his shoes on so he ran out back without me. I was watching through the open back door and he took off running after our chickens who had escaped their enclosure. When we first moved into this house and took over care of the chickens he loved to chase them across the yard. He had this sort of manic glee in his laugh as he chased them up and down the yard. It was cute, but not good. Poor girls get flustered easily. I was about to holler at him to stop when I realized what he was doing. He wasn’t chasing them arbitrarily for some sort of sadistic pleasure; he was putting them back in their enclosure. Just like daddy does. He had his arms out to try and corral them and ran down each one and forced them back to the fenced-in area. He shut the gate and grabbed the brick that we prop against it to keep it shut. By the time I got outside the job was done and he was standing proudly asking to play football. He wanted us to have the yard to ourselves.

Even as I write this story, with the event barely 24 hours past I know I am missing things. I know I have lost some of the special grace of that moment. The way he moved, the way the sun slanted into our yard, the look of accomplishment, that perfect running stride.

Those moments proliferate when you are a parent. And you can’t keep hold of them. But you are constantly moving forward into a new moment. This morning he came downstairs and roared at me like a lion (a ferocious lion) because that scares me. Then he said “Hi, beautiful” to his sister and bent over and kissed her. 

"When the dew fell upon the camp in the night, the manna fell with it." 

His mercies are new every morning.