Expiration Date

I think switching to organic milk has actually made time accelerate. Let me explain:

I've always had this little moment when I open the fridge to get the milk out, pour it in my coffee or over my cereal, and I see the expiration date, and it throws me ahead a few weeks in time. In a few weeks, or less, this milk will be bad, I realize... And that is only if it is unopened. If I've already opened it, what do I have, 5 days? I wonder, what will have transpired between now and then? Will I still be shuffling through my everyday life, half-drowsy and unaware of the beauty of it all, bothered and weighed down by momentary troubles? Or will some major event have occurred to jolt me fully awake, leaving me completely changed and wishing I could go back to the state I lived in before?

I often think of a scene in Friends when one of Phoebe's clients died on the massage table... She says that her client woke up, thought to herself, Oh, I'll take a nice walk, get a massage,... And Phoebe says, "Little does she know, God said, Uh-huh, yeah, but that's IT!"
Boom! You make plans for your whole day, your week, your month, your year, but really it is all a big guess. Something can change, and then...That's all you get. We walk through life with safeguards in place. We go to the doctor for preventative care, wear our seat belts, and say our prayers. But the truth is we don't know how long we or our loved ones will be here.

A friend of the family had a tragedy occur. I don't know all the details, but his young son had an accident, suffered major head trauma, and has been fighting for his life. From what I gather, it was just an ordinary day, and then, out of the blue, something extraordinary happened, and their lives have been changed. They had an agenda for the day and then everything changed. What I've noticed is that during this tragedy, this little boy's daddy has expressed nothing but faith in the goodness of God and in God's ability to heal his child. He has asked for prayer, and he has believed that prayer will change things. Before this minute in time, when things went so awry, he probably had lots of things on his mind... possibly money, jobs, household management, finances, church and family obligations, the laundry, the bills, the grass to mow, who knows. But now his world has become very small, and his focus on what matters has become very narrow. All of the extraneous has been taken away, and all that matters to him is all that has ever really mattered to him. His children, his wife, his family, God. So far, his son has shown positive signs of improvement. And I pray that this path will continue, that God will heal this sweet little boy and restore him to his family just as he was.
How has this tragedy affected me? Well, I've been praying a whole lot more than usual. Honest, sincere, wrung out prayer, prayer from my gut, from the bottom of my heart. And I've been paying more attention to my kids. I've been savoring the words that they say, marvelling at the ways they move, at Anna dancing around to her My Little Pony CD, at Jonathan racing across the pool, swimming underwater, as fast as he can, legs and arms thrashing, kicking, kicking, like a shark is chasing him, but really he is just doing it for the pure joy of the fact that he can. I've been grabbing them and hugging them and smelling the top of their heads, breathing in deep as I can. I've been trying to hold on, trying to slow down, trying to remember that I don't know how long I will be here, or they will be here, and that each day, no matter how weighed down with obligations, irritations, and frustrations, is an absolute gift. A gift not to be unwrapped hurriedly, given a momentary glance, and tossed aside in a pile with all the others. You can't open each day, assuming that there will be thousands more to come, and you don't truly need to appreciate this particular one. It may be the only one you have, or it may be the only one you have with a certain loved one. If you have something to say, you should say it. If you need to forgive someone, you should go ahead and do it.

So, I opened my fridge this morning. The expiration date on my milk is August 5, 2010. It is organic, so I have more time than I used to before the milk would go bad. When I bought this milk, I had almost a full month before its expiration date. Instead of thinking ahead a week, I am thinking ahead a whole month now. August 5th. Flash forward, what will be happening August 5th? Well, Jonathan will be getting ready to start 1st grade. Anna, pre-K. New clothes will have been bought, new shoes, new school supplies. My Mom will be safely back from Wisconsin. This is what I hope for. All the time, I feel this lack of satisfaction with my life, this nagging worry that I'm not enough, that my life isn't enough. And then I realize, faced with the thought that something could change, really, what I want, is for everything to stay exactly the same. I don't want a major change of course. I want my days to unfold, from now until August 5th, just as normal and unremarkable as possible. Because, really, each day is extraordinary in its everyday-ness. Every day that I get to live this life that God has given me, with this family I have, right here in this house, is a gift and a miracle. And I hope I remember to be grateful for it.