Time has the tendency to make the most ordinary things
sacred. It lends the paths worn by habit and routine a beauty that’s more than
just skin deep; a beauty backed by memories and sacrifice and love, like the
creases etched in the corner of a momma’s eyes. I don’t understand the mystery
behind this, but I’ve felt it more than once; this ache of sacredness pressing
in close to daily life.
I think it must be a universal thing, to some degree, because
an author much more eloquent than I once wrote, “For so it
falls out that what we have we prize not to the worth whiles we enjoy it, but
being lacked and lost, why then we rack the value, then we find the virtue that
possession would not show us whiles it was ours.” It's the same idea that's
behind more well-worn phrases like “Hindsight is 20/20” and “Life can only be
understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards”. And what I think it means
is that as our worlds shift and time passes, we’re granted glimpses of wonder…
if we look for them.
I’m in the middle of this right now. In a way that’s eerily
similar to the life changes we faced in 2012, Eric and I are navigating big
adjustments in our personal lives and careers, and we’re moving across the
country once again. Depending on your personality, it can be easy to focus
solely on either what’s coming or to mourn what’s ending, but I don’t want to do
either of these. I want to look forward, yes, but also backward. I want to look
all around me, and deliberately call my attention to the sacredness of what God
has given me over the last five-ish years.
Since
I moved to New York, this place has been wearing deeper and deeper groves
on my heart. Schenectady is hard to love most of the time, but especially so in
January, when its salt-bleached roads are bordered by heaps of dirty snow, and
the bitter air stings my face every time I walk outside. But now, driving these
same old roads to these same old places, I’m seeing oh-so-clearly the beauty
that has been slowly taking shape.
I’ve
built a life here. All of the adventures—easy and good, hard and painful—that
I have been gifted with have started from the middle of this northeast city. I
knew from the day I arrived here that my walk in this place wouldn’t be long,
and I can only be honest and admit that in the day-to-day noise and clamor,
that was sometimes a comfort. Life can be so hard sometimes.
But for the most part, that knowledge of time also impacted my
living. What most people get years down the road, I was given from the start:
an awareness of the virtue of now.
And so I invested myself in this place and it’s people as best as I could,
knowing that what seemed ordinary and mundane would someday be revealed as
sacred when the light of time shone back on it. I didn’t do a perfect job, of
course. I didn’t savor every moment.
But a breath shy of six years of this and there’s a lot more sweet than bitter
in my memories of this place. And in the back of my brain there is a
whisper—no, a shout—saying REMEMBER THIS.
THIS IS IMPORTANT.
What I’ve known about
the temporary nature of these years has shaped the way I’ve lived them.
And this matters because I don’t want to limit this
knowledge or its effects to this one facet of my life. I want this to be how I
live, period. I want to try to see
the stages I find myself in, the situations I encounter, and the roles I’m
called to fill as good gifts, not boring
routine. In this next chapter of my little old life, my prayer is to live
as though I can already see the sacredness that I know is innate in each
moment. And that’s my prayer for you, too—the family and friends who
have been with me along the way.
Thank you. <3
No place at last is better than the world. The world
Is no better than its places. Its places at last
Are no better than their people while their people
Continue in them.
Is no better than its places. Its places at last
Are no better than their people while their people
Continue in them.
(Wendell Berry)
