As you can see, Susie at Bluebird Blogs finished my new template. I tend to need a change now and then, but there was purpose behind this one. My old template had two rocking chairs, next to the lake. It was the perfect spot to retire - someday.

It's easy to live, looking ahead to someday. The next step, place, goal in life. We're a few years out from retirement, and as we get closer, it gets harder to wait it out. Several examples/stories come to mind, but they all say the same thing: I can't hold tightly to one thing and open my hand for the other. By looking ahead to the next step or stage in life, I'm missing out on much of what this one has to offer.

I remember when we took down the swingset in the back yard. I cried. The same thing with the sandbox where Dan and his dog had dug and built with his old metal cars. I knew the time for them has passed; I couldn't get it back, and I wished I'd absorbed more of it. I remember moving out of houses where we'd brought babies home, hating to leave them.

Life has many of those moments - moving out of your apartment into the first house. Taking down the baby crib after many years of it being filled. Having the kids head off to college, and you generally have gas in your car and groceries in your fridge, but they are gone. Even carving pumpkins and dyeing Easter eggs - they are events that only happen during a small window of time; before you know it, you're buying those fake pumpkins at Michaels and hoping the candy you give out will make up for the fact that there are no real pumpkins with candles lit, fewer decorations.

This year, life for our family could be summed up as nuts - crazy - out of control busy. Blessings, trials, times when we were so stretched in every way imaginable. We survived it all, but I was generally looking ahead to when the current crises was under control, to move on to the next thing on my list. Life isn't always tidy. It doesn't always fit on a to-do list. I don't really want it to. But there has to be something in between.

I don't want to miss the moments, right now. When the phone rings, I want to be able to stop and fully engage in that conversation. When my husband comes home at night, I want to be sure he knows it makes my day that he walks through the door. I want my friends to know I care about them, about what's going on in their lives. I want to not tell my kids, "I'm sorry, I only have ten minutes...", again.

We had our annual Christmas luncheon at church this past week. I was seated next to a dear woman who moved here from Turkey many years ago. The years have not removed her heavy accent, and her sentence structure is still a little crazy. It makes you listen more closely when she speaks. I sat beside her, while we sang Christmas carols, just soaking in hearing familiar songs, sounding very different. Listening to the entire room of over 200 women sing, I thought of how busy they all likely were; the stress of knowing they all had so much to do this time of year.

Reverence - it means "a feeling or attitude of deep respect, love and awe, as for something sacred." I AM Blessed Beyond Measure. I just need to make a cup of tea, curl up on that window seat, grab the book I'm currently reading, and have a reverence for my life - here and now. Maybe I need to ask those around me to speak in accents, so I slow down and listen a bit more closely.

Thank you, Susie, for capturing perfectly what was on my heart - a reverence for life. Right now.