I can’t believe this month is gone! The last month of summer is just a blink away! Oh, that we would dare to do things differently in order to stay in the moments and enjoy them before they are forever gone! Grab your coffee and come on in. I want to share an amazing conversation I had with my most favorite nine-year-old boy just the other day.
I was going to go through the checklist in our recipe for joy, but I just feel the need to share a couple of things on my heart that reiterate staying in the moments, especially because you never know when joy is going to get stirred up and come bursting out.
Just the other day, we were in the Taco-Bell drive-thru (me and my oldest grandson) – his blood sugar had dropped and he needed a burrito and fast! He asked me how long before we were home. I answered, “Oh, once we get out of here, probably about 15 to 20 minutes.”
Silence followed my response, so profoundly I had to turn to make sure he was okay. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
I watched the expression on his face, blank like an untouched piece of paper. I felt as though he had so much more to say so I just sat and waited.
“I just wish I hadn’t asked that question.”
Startled, I asked him why and he said, “Because what am I going to do for 15 minutes? I might get bored.”
I was silently flabbergasted that my sweet nine-year-old was that concerned about how to spend his time. I prayed before walking through the door that opened to an amazing conversation about staying in the moments. Just thinking about it, and how he received what I shared so stirs up my joy! I confidently and gently told him that when we think further ahead than where we actually are, we lose some of the biggest blessings. I told him that Nana used to be like that, for most of her life, even, and still had to catch herself and bring herself back into the moment she was in so she could truly enjoy it and be in it.
Thinking about the look on his face, how engaged he was, mind and soul, brings me joy, true joy. Right before it was our turn to move up to the drive-up window, he asked, “Nana, is it okay to think ahead if it’s something really fun?”
Well how could I argue with that? “Absodarnlutely,” I answered. “That’s called looking forward to something, and having something to look forward to can help us out of a difficult moment we are in.”
Well that conversation led to stress, and what it does to the body, and up until this point, it was just him and me in the conversation but my son who had just joined us after taking my granddaughter to the restroom added some interesting things about how God designed the body and how He built some protective mechanisms against stress, but if we continue to stay in a mindset of stress, the body begins to react. He described how the body ages faster with stress.
By now I’m thoroughly in this conversation, silenced by the joy of it,
intrigued
by the depth of it and completely humbled to be part of it, and my
granddaughter, sitting so pretty back there in her booster, listening
intently, her eyes getting big, just like her big brother’s. I wish you
could have seen how big his little eyes got!“Really, stress really does all that?” He asked.
I piped in with how stress has taken its toll on my body, that that’s why my face looks so tired, especially today, I added.”
His response brought joy bubbling up to the surface of my heart, and as I write this, its gurgling over, making me smile from the inside out as the echo of his response sings in the halls of my heart: “Well I think you look really good, Nana”!
I love talking to this incredibly bright little boy who is always, and I mean always thinking. Oops, I almost started to cry as I thought about this time next week when they all will be leaving for Texas – stay in the moment; stay in the moment; stay in the moment!
Staying in the moments …
Evinda
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