Long Days, Short Years

Baby Blues is my favorite cartoon. My family thinks the mom in that strip, Wanda, even looks like a caricature of me, and she and I have had much in common for many years now.Today my kids, who love to read the funnies, made sure to show me Baby Blues, because they knew I would appreciate it.

The first frame said, "The days are long" and it showed the overly eager mom peering into the baby's mouth wondering if the first little tooth would ever appear. The second frame said, "But the years are short."   Fast forward in time and the same mom is now showing the dad the bill from the orthodontist for braces for the same child! The dad's response: "Already??!!?"

That is how it feels to be a parent. One minute it seems you're waiting in great anticipation for those "1st" events, but before you can even believe it, that same baby is adult size and making plans to go out into the world to make a life of her own. It really does go by so fast!

But the idea of "long days, yet short years" resonated with me for another reason. Many times I find myself focused on how LONG a particular day seems because of the conflict and opposition that is a very real part of raising children. To begin with, parenting is simply hard work, and sometimes continues around the clock. Meeting the constant physical needs and striving to engage children in the spiritual dimension can be exhausting. But then factor into that equation a child that is not responsive, but resistant, and in fact openly rebellious against your instruction or parental wisdom, and the day seems to slowly drag by.

There are so many wrong ways to respond to the opposition, and I'm sure I have been guilty of all of them at one time or another. The tension and stress can tempt me to become angry, lose my joy, withhold affection, become self-righteous, despair, focus on their sinfulness, and forget the power of God to change them and me! Choosing any of these responses just complicates their sin with my own.

But "the years are short"! And I don't want to wake up one day and realize that my house is empty, the eternal souls given into our care for a short season are gone, and I wasted my opportunity.

So aside from repenting when I have responded wrongly to my children's opposition, I am asking the Lord to help me pursue love. It is a pursuit that makes me get on my knees and pray for the Holy Spirit to work in my heart and give me the grace to do it. It is not natural, but can be done by God's supernatural enabling.

There are a couple of passages from the Bible that I've found very helpful when the conflict is intense. Colossians 3:12-14 is an all-time favorite: "And so, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. And beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity."

And, I love the convicting truth of I Corinthians 13:4-8a: "Love is patient, love is kind, and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek it's own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails."

May the Lord help us to love especially during the long days, with an eye to the future as the years are short.
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BTW, if you are also a Baby Blues fan, you can visit their site by clicking here.