Setting my timer for five minutes, and . . . GO.

My daughter turns 14 this weekend.

Fourteen.

She’s the one who made me a mom. I remember those long, slow days in the beginning, when it felt as if we had all the time in the world.

Now, fourteen years later, the days are full and short and I understand what all those people meant when they watched me rocking my newborn and said, “It’s gonna go so fast.” 

We’re past the middle of our parenting with kids in the home. We’re past the middle, and did we even notice when it passed us by? Did we even pause to realize we had crossed the halfway mark, that we were closer to 18^th birthdays and high school graduations than to diapers and first words?

I wish we would have paused, stopped to look around, stopped to see the day and the moment for what it was, not what it could be the next day or next week or next year.

I wish I would have done more looking around instead of looking back or looking ahead.

It’s in the middle where the magic happens – the pain and heartache, too – but also the beauty and grace. The middle of the ordinary days of broken glasses and belly laughs, of skinned knees and soccer practices, of loud singing and rushed driving.

It’s in the middle that we see our desperate need for Him and turn to Him for every breath and ounce of strength.

STOP.

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