Present

When I was a child, I yearned to be an adult.  Yearned may be an understatement. I felt trapped. Trapped at school, trapped at home, trapped in a child's body.  Finally becoming an adult thrusted great freedom upon me, just as I had hoped.  I don't remember ever really enjoying childhood... hm... maybe at the pool... watching my dad kick a ball to the sun & its return back to earth.  Super cool.  Playing with my sisters as a very young child, when life had no worry, when I felt accepted.  I'm not writing this to tell a sob story, I know lots of people who had a far far worse childhood than I did & some who had a much much better one than me.  Regardless, the point I'm making is that I always looked ahead to something else, something more... Flash forward to adulthood.  The planning & looking ahead never stops.   I like being an adult much more than I liked childhood, but I constantly plan for the next thing or look back on the past.  It is very very seldom that I settle in the present. When I do I'm generally admiring the excitement and wonderment of my children, they are precious.   The present-- time-- is a present to be unwrapped, to be thankful for, to be cherished.  Unwrapping the gift is what makes life worthwhile.  God has been trying to teach me this for quite sometime, I've been stubborn and short sighted.  I constantly demand more guidance toward the future, not seeing that He is guiding me to be still in the present that I might fully enjoy the present now and when the future becomes the present.

After reading chapter 4 of "one thousand gifts" by AnnVoskamp it became abundantly clear what God has been trying to show me all this time!!  Thank you Ann for allowing God to grow you up in Him & for being brave enough to share all your "stuff" in a book for the world to read.  Here are a few snippets from this amazing book:

"Time is life.  And if I want the fullest life, I need to find fullest time."
"God gives us time. And who has time for God?  Which makes no sense."
"Being in a hurry. Getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me.  I cannot think of a single advantage I've ever gained from being in a hurry.  But a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all the rushing... Through all that haste I thought I was making up time.  It turns out I was throwing it away."
"On every level of life, from housework to heights of prayer, in all judgment and efforts to get things done, hurry and impatience are sure marks of the amateur."
"Hurry always empties a soul."
"Thanks makes now a sanctuary."
"I awake to I AM here. When I'm present, I meet I AM, the very presence of a present God.  In His embrace, time loses all sense of speed and stress and space and stands so still and... holy."
"I want to savor long whatever time holds."

I want to start living in the moment, being all here instead of all in the future or all in the past.  Every season will be so much more wonderful, pure, thick, in the presence of God. Today. Now. In this very moment. Living today in sheer thankfulness for everything in each moment.