The Sound of a Million Dreams by Camfield Suanne;Calhoun Adele Ahlberg;

Author:Camfield, Suanne;Calhoun, Adele Ahlberg; [Camfield, Suanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 6006796
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2017-02-03T21:44:32+00:00

When I lament the rushing, when I lament the dishes and my job and the kids’ schedule and Eric’s work and his graduate school and the crashing of the waterfall because I just want to be attentive to the Stirring, Eric says things that annoy me. The present, in fact, is one of our most recurring arguments, like how we argue about him always leaving the garage door open or how I can’t seem to pull the car in the driveway without maligning half the front yard.

He says things like, “The biggest problem with people today is they think they have to have it all right now,” or “You know, Moses waited forty years to go back to Egypt and he never did get in the Promised Land,” or “One of the biggest challenges in our culture, and for you especially, is that we have to learn to chase the future while still being faithful to the present.”

Oh, wait. That’s a good one—and the one that annoys me the most.

I know that the present is one of the most beautiful gifts we’ve been given. The present is where life unfolds, when we’re focused more on who we’re becoming than on where we’re trying to go. The future can’t shape us because it has not happened yet; only the present (which also will, at some point, become our past) can shape us into who we are. While the past reminds us who we are, the sanctifying process of the present whittles our character and our holiness to allow us to see each day as a step closer to the divine.

Yet in all the rushing and hurry, the present is what I begin to resent the most.

The present where my children, the two most beautiful and impressionable souls I know, live in the shelter and protection and guidance of my home, a home that will only contain them for a handful more years. The present where all four of my children’s grandparents are vibrant and healthy, where I can still wear four-inch heels, and I have a life I largely I love. The present where I learn to become a better writer, where my marriage heals and grows, where my friendships run deep for the sheer quality of time and experience we’ve communed together; where I am finally learning to accept myself and those around me, flawed and broken as we all are; where pretense becomes intolerable, image-keeping laughable, where a few extra pounds around my waistline aren’t the end of the world, where sunscreen becomes more important than the bronze of a glowing tan. The present, where I’ve become a person who listens better, talks less, lives and loves more intentionally; where interruptions become invitations, where I recognize my perpetual need for grace, and where eternity becomes the only answer that makes sense of this unjust and broken world.

The present, where becoming happens in the thickest parts of all the doing.

It is fall, and I am cleaning my backyard, pulling weeds, pruning bushes, digging through the earth of my flowerpots, clipping burnt ends.

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