Where Does the time Go?

I can remember as a child sitting in my room often wondering "when will I ever grow up?" I was likely in trouble when these thoughts were going through my mind and wanted more than anything to grow up, get out of my parents’ house and get to do WHATEVER I wanted. 

It is amazing how time works.

As a child it seems as though you will never grow up. You long for the days that you have freedom. To be 16, 18. To go off to college. 

Then you get to college and you simply want time to slow down. You want to soak up every moment of the life you are living, you want to be young and carefree in this time of your life yet it goes by so fast that you wonder "where did the time go?"

Then you get out of school and life really begins. The life you were longing for as a child is here and at times it is everything you ever dreamed of and then at times you just want to go back to being a child, where people took care of you and you did not have to worry about bills, taking care of your own kids or worrying about what is going to happen to the people you love. 

Time. It goes so fast when we don't want it to and slows down when we long for it to just speed up.

Yesterday, marked 5 years since the death of my Father. 

In many ways it seems like I haven't seen or talked to my dad in 10 years and in others it seems as though we were all just sitting around my parents kitchen table laughing and living our best life. 

5 years. I would give anything to go back to the month before my dad passed and to just have a little bit longer. To realize that this was happening and to spend as much time as possible with my dad. To say all the things, I long to say to him. But that isn't how time works or life. 

I sit and think now a lot about the times with my dad. About how I was so very loved by him and so many of my friends wished they had him as a dad. 

He was the most of most cool dads and still to this day his legacy lives on through all of us.

I see him in my nephew Ben, the way Ben laughs and is kind of sneaky when he is being silly. I see him Henry, in Henry's worry for the world and his family. I see him in Tannie, in Tannie's willingness to do just about anything. 

Even when people leave this world, they still live in each of us. It is as though a piece of them has been passed down to all the generations to continue living so that their best life can still go on.

5 years. 

In 5 years, our lives have changed drastically. I became a Pastor- WHAT?!?! Paige had Ben. I had Tannie. Henry is in school. Evan got married. Mom moved. We all changed our jobs. 

While all that has changed and we are all incredibly blessed and at peace with the loss of our dad, time still doesn't take away the pain. There is a saying "time heals all wounds" and while time does heal, it doesn't take away the wounds. 

Our wounds are a part of us, they help to make up the story of who we are and without them or when we "forget" about them, we are denying who we are. 

We are broken, we are messy, we live chaotic lives, but we are God's children; enough, beloved and worthy of this life we are living.

Time may not heal all wounds and we may always long to go back to different times in our lives but know that living in the present, welcoming the pain of what you have been through and believing that God is with you through it all will allow you to embrace the days ahead without fear. 

My dad, the rock of our family, will always live on in each of us and that is because he shaped who we are, taught us how to love and never gave up on us. Even in the afterlife, as he is sitting at the table with God, he with us-guiding each of us and loving us through all our sorrow and joy because it is through him that we learned to love this life we have been given. 

Embrace today, live today with courage and love knowing your worth, knowing you are enough and knowing you are beloved.

-Pastor Ali 

Dad and baby Henry