Time

       One of the major adjustments of a full time caregiver is the sacrifice of time.
    Several people have commented to me on the sacrifice it must be to give up three months of my time to serve Rebecca. But what they don't realize is that setting aside three months of my time is not difficult for me at this stage of life, in fact it is easy to do so joyfully in order to serve Rebecca. The sacrifice is not dropping everything in Columbus to come to Belgium. The sacrifice is dropping everything at any moment to come to Rebecca's side and help her. It is the willingness to sacrifice the moment I had intended to use to read quietly to assist Rebecca's transfer into bed, it's exchanging the time I had meant to do laundry to help write an e-mail for Rebecca. It is swapping my internal order of operations of all that needs to be done for Rebecca's order. It is constantly living being ready to drop everything  at anytime to assist Rebecca. In sum it is recognizing that time does not belong to me.
            But did time ever truly belong to me in the first place? Who came up with the idea that we are owed time-that time is our to own?
  We try to control it with plans constructed within the tight frameworks of clocks and calenders. The irony is while we try to control time it actually controls us. "The month, the day, the hour, and the seconds in which we live in determine how much longer we have to speak, listen, eat, work, sleep, study, pray, or stay" Henri Nouwen says in his booklet Compassion. He proceeds to explain "clock time",  "clock time is outer time, time that has a hard, merciless objectivity to it....Clock time makes us disappointed with today."
   But as one of Rebecca's favorite verses in the Psalms says, "My times are in your hands" Psalm 31:15
             If our times are in God's hands then there is no reason to be disappointed with the day or impatient in the moment because each moment within God's hands is full and rich, we can rest in the knowledge that this is the exact moment designated for this specific time. Surrendering the belief that we can own time allows us to be patient people and "patience makes us loving, caring, gentle, tender ,and always grateful for the abundance of God's gifts" (Henri Nouwen). Recognizing that time does not belong to me and never did allows me to patiently flow with the ever changing current of my days here.
   So my constant prayer is this: Lord my days are in your hands-my time is in your hands. Let me joyfully give up each moment to you-not being restricted or burdened by time but freely walking in each moment with you.Thank you for the gift of each moment and allowing me to share each moment with You.
                          

Photos are from an excursion we all took to the Grand Bigard castle outside of Brussels. The tulips were astounding. The entire outing was filled with a beauty that speaks to the soul.