Slow Ride....Take it Easy

"Being in a hurry. Getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me.

I cannot think of  a single advantage I've ever gained from being in a hurry.

 But a thousand broken missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all the rushing.....

Through all that haste I thought I was making up time. It turns out I was throwing it away."

Ann Voskamp from her book One Thousand Gifts

Hurry. We all do it. Rush, rush, rush. Everything is an emergency. There will be times I will catch myself fussing at the boys as they get in the van to hurry up and go faster. Why? Why am I rushing through life. Impatient, I am an impatient person. I couldn't wait to get married, couldn't wait to have babies, can't wait to see who my boys turn out to be. SLOW DOWN! In reading this poetic and gentle book by Ann Voskamp about living life fully, right where you are, I am noticing things more. Looking around and taking joy in the moment.  All of my boys are growing, changing. It hurts, but I don't want it to. I want to slow down, take it in stride and ENJOY the ride. I am THANKFUL, for each moment I've had in my life. The painful times, the difficult times, the growing times, the joyful times, the beautiful times. "This is where God is. In the present. I AM.-His very name."~Ann Voskamp. In every moment of my life, God is there. I AM. I may notice him more in the marriages, the births, the joyful milestones. But He is in the broken places too, in the failure, the loss, the deaths. I AM, God with us. Never leaving, never forsaking.

"See! I Will Not Forget You. I Have Engraved You on the. Palm of My Hand." Isaiah 49:15

"When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows." ~Ann Voskamp