Pondering...

This past week, I've spent some time thinking about the passage of time. At the beginning of June, our family was in the same place it has been for the past ten years...just plugging along in Western Oregon. Now, near the end of July, our house is half-way packed up, the memories are off of the walls and inside boxes, and I'm trying to figure out what items I want to take the time to pack...transport...and then unpack again, and which ones can simply spend some time at Goodwill before another family takes them home. It's amazing to me how quickly life can change.

There used to be a commercial on the radio for a gas company. The final line of the ad was "Life happens between empty and full." It spoke about all that you can do with a tank of gas. It always bugged me...to me is seems like all that happened between empty and full was watching the dollars drain out of my checking account as I sat at the gas station. If that's life, I'd say "No, thank you!" But, oh, think of all that can happen between full and empty. Because that's really all we have...what we do between full and empty, start and finish, "You're attention, please" and "This is your final call." It's the every day things that count...how we choose to spend our time, what we choose to spend our time on, who we choose to spend our time with.

Bob has given notice at his current job. He started there just after we got married in 1998. He has thoroughly enjoyed the work, the co-workers and the firm. But, he's made the choice to move our family back "home." To be closer to so many family members, to be in a place where life just moves a little slower, where less time is spent on the freeway and more time is spent with the kids. We are sad to be leaving. We've made so many friends here. We'll think of them often, and we'll stay in touch. We'll come back to visit and we hope that we'll have lots of visitors, too. We'll miss our little meeting here, but look forward to getting to know those in our new meeting.

This week, time has meant many things to me. It meant trying to get as much done as quickly as possible. It meant planning a few fun things for the kids in between packing boxes. It meant making sure to stop, put the kids in my lap and spend some time studying. It meant spending time with some very important people before we leave. It meant trying to stop or cancel things here and get things started there. It meant making list after list in the hopes of not forgetting something. But, most of all, time meant trying my best to make each moment worthwhile for the good of our family.