Yesterday, while reading Rhonda Jeans’ blog, I came across the quote below. Originally part of a post written some months back, it first appeared on another remarkable Blog. This young couple are facing tremendous challenges supported by an amazing family and it seems, a large slice of the blogging world. You can read the whole story and get updates here, http://blog.cjanerun.com/.
I’m always a sucker for writing that helps me slow down and stop and think. And again as we find ourselves at another threshold in our lives and while we assess options and explore possibilities, Rhonda reminds us to “mine everyday for the joy it holds”. Surely a small wisdom we should all remember … How I wish I had written the words below for they speak what has been in my heart since our family photographs were taken and lost in some dusty African shanty town (my missing moments). The few that remain are poor mementos of the freshly bathed, sweet smelling babies, soft-furred companions, sunlit rooms… moments that I treasured (but not enough), moments when the very busy-ness of our lives made me impatient and irritable. Moments when as a mother, as a wife, I should have stopped whatever I was doing, paid attention, worked out was really important. Things can change in a heartbeat…they often do, lives turned around…fragile, precious. And what is really important? And how do you tell? And so, I pass this on to you…because I was this mother too and that is one of my regrets…
I’m always a sucker for writing that helps me slow down and stop and think. And again as we find ourselves at another threshold in our lives and while we assess options and explore possibilities, Rhonda reminds us to “mine everyday for the joy it holds”. Surely a small wisdom we should all remember … How I wish I had written the words below for they speak what has been in my heart since our family photographs were taken and lost in some dusty African shanty town (my missing moments). The few that remain are poor mementos of the freshly bathed, sweet smelling babies, soft-furred companions, sunlit rooms… moments that I treasured (but not enough), moments when the very busy-ness of our lives made me impatient and irritable. Moments when as a mother, as a wife, I should have stopped whatever I was doing, paid attention, worked out was really important. Things can change in a heartbeat…they often do, lives turned around…fragile, precious. And what is really important? And how do you tell? And so, I pass this on to you…because I was this mother too and that is one of my regrets…
"The biggest mistake I made [as a parent] is the one that most of us make... I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of [my three children] sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages six, four, and one. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less" by Anna Quindle.
