The Ever-Present.

Originally posted May 1, 2013

I was looking at pictures tonight of a time we had last summer.

It was a time at the beach, at a beautiful beach.  The photos are lovely.  The children look giddy, the ocean ever-new to them.

And the wrenching I felt as I looked at these photographs was a mix of how-is-this-going-just-as-fast-as-everyone-said-it-would, and sadness as I remembered the rest of our weekend, that weekend last summer.

:::

We were at a wedding, a beautiful event full of such love, all around.  Tim and I were in the midst of hard things, continuing to stumble through work stresses, which had become life stresses.

All I wanted was ease, all I needed was time.

The night of the wedding, the challenges all became too great - those of our life back home, how they'd followed us here, how the children were still just small children, sometimes challenging to travel with.  

They melted down just as the fun was starting, two tired little people.

I became so, so angry.  Once away from the jubilant crowd, I was flippant, rude, angry - I was the opposite woman of the one I usually hope to be.

It was too much.  The ever-present.

Even now, almost a year later, I can't even remember that night without crying anguished tears, so real is my sadness over how I must have made my children feel.

:::

"Mama, do you not want me to grow any more?" Isla asked the other day, when I half-fake-lamented how big she was getting, that it was just unbelievable to me that she had a loose tooth already, that she's five.

"No, honey.  I want you to keep on growing.  I want you to become everything you need to be and do everything you want to do."

This time, this time of realizing that the moments are just that - seconds, moments - it's excruciating in its perfect beauty, in its sadness.

I want nothing to change ever again and I want simultaneously for us to all become what is most deeply possible.

Ever present, ever trying, ever going, going, going.

*E