The Gift of Being Present

July 11, 2023

Beloved:
          My middle kid and only son turns twenty-eight today.  We’ll go out for Korean BBQ tonight, as is his usual request.  He’s a good son, anxious to make his mama’s life easier if he can.  He came over to move two really heavy things for me yesterday.  And brought bread dough with instructions for how to bake it.  I remember him and a neighbor kid when they were six or seven, with a cereal bowl full of sugar, picking blackberries off the vine.  The easiest pie I ever made.  Once when I did make pie he licked his plate and told me I was a really good cooker, one of my favorite compliments ever.
          All three of my kids are grown and making their own way.  The pandemic scuppered the launch of two of them just as they were finishing education programs.  But they have struggled hard in the right direction:  to make a life, not just get a job.  I couldn’t be more proud of all of them for that, and just a little proud of me — for my smaller part in their becoming.  What a privilege to witness another human being grow from infancy to adulthood, to see the wonder of creation happening right before my eyes, watching them get bigger, stronger, smarter, while I did my best to keep the refrigerator full.
          The point is far less about my parenting or about my awesome kids, and far more about the gift of being present to the perfection of this day and every day I’ve been given to be present with these people, and so many other people too.  The absolute miracle it is to know and be known by others, to be loved by them, cared for by them, to be in their good thoughts and memories.  Tapping into that deep and wide truth of this life sustains me when all else fails.  However lonely we may feel at times, we are not alone so long as someone somewhere loves us.

A not-so-recent picture of me and mine.

          Do try to get outside in this beautiful day, knowing that you are loved beyond measure by the One who made you and by those in whose good thoughts you remain.
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~ peace & prayers, 
pastor annette