 spreadshirt.com "Live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find eternity in each moment..." ~Thoreau The church I attended while I was growing up used to have a live Nativity Program during the holiday season. I was eleven the year I participated, an angel in the choir. The night air was cold, as the angels all stood huddled together in filmy white choir robes, cardboard wings, and pipe cleaner halos. We were on raised bleachers, well above the rest of the actors in our program and behind us in a pen were live animals. I really wanted to climb down and pet the sheep, especially the little black-faced lambs that were adorable. I thought it was silly we were using a plastic baby instead of a real one for the baby Jesus (...because like most eleven-year-olds I had no clue why using a real baby would have been an epically bad idea). I absently sang the songs that were the angel's part, while my little mind pop-corned over a hundred other kid thoughts. Physically I was present, but mentally my focus was as scattered as the night stars twinkling overhead. The memory of my great "angel debut" was triggered Sunday morning, as I sat curled up in the church pew watching the children down front doing the Christmas service. It felt like about a hundred years ago when I was their age, and only five minutes ago when my girls were that small. One moment in our lives slips swiftly into another, a hundred, a thousand. How many of those do we spend distracted by other things and miss actually being present in that series of "nows" swiftly flying by? We often waste them dwelling on the past, worrying about the future, or merely thinking of a host of inconsequential things that crowd out the NOW like people crammed onto a moving bus. We are anxious to "get there" or go "back there" instead of being here. It's a constant battle to allow yourself to just be here (at least it is for me), but it is one I will continue to wage war on because it's important. Now is the only moment we're promised. Now is the only space in time that is relevant. And now that today's blog article is done, I'm going to go bake Christmas cookies for my lovely neighbors. I am happy for "n-o-w", kind neighbors...and cookies! 
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About The Author
I grew up in rural North Carolina. When I was only nineteen, I moved away and became a military wife. My only aspiration at that tender time in my life was to create an adult life that "fixed" all of the "injustices" of my childhood. Secretly, however, I wanted to reach for the sky! I wanted to be a writer and find ways to "save the world" (my mother used to say, "You have Save the World Syndrome".). Mostly, I wanted to matter. Archives
August 2021
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