Time Cannot Reverse.
Mistakes, hard days, and undeserved mercy.
No one wishes for a bad day.
The type of day when you wish you could hit restart and wake to find that everything has reset once more to its pre-disturbed state.
The type of day that seems to get cyclically worse and worse and you’re caught in the epicenter of perpetual chaos where the only thing left to do is to close your eyes and brace for the spinning.
The type of day when your failures are great and your lack of self esteem is greater, bludgeoning yourself with regret and disappointment and the ache that says you’ll never be enough.
If you’re a parent like me, you’ve likely experienced days like these before. Possibly even this week.
To be a parent is an odd experience. On one hand, it is the apex of earthly fulfillment and delight. There is truly nothing like being a parent. To pour your love and whole self into something so precious as made from your own flesh and blood is a divine privilege unto itself.
But it is also the most heart-wrenching, soul-splitting, grief-filled work that will consume you, day-and-night, for the rest of your life.
I never recognized the passage of time, until I became a father.
I never wanted to hold something so close, until I became a father.
I never loved something so much, until I became a father.
I never noticed my own shortcomings, until I became a father.
When you have children, a part of you exists separate from your being — more precious than anything else, super omnia, even you.
Parenthood takes everything and offers far more in return, for those that find a way to make it.
And seldom does anything ever go as planned in life, particularly when you are a parent. That likely needs no further explanation.
Well on this particular day, I found myself rather stressed and irritable, overwhelmed with the stressors of accelerated school and a coming exam. In the accelerated nursing program, every exam means the difference between continuing on or flunking out, which is not an option with my family’s livelihood at stake.
I tell myself my bitterness is earned, that my circumstances demand it. Relief will come, and so will calm.
I understand it.
But my kids? They don’t.
When they wake, the house swells in boundless energy and chaos. Laughter and shouting and sometimes crying intermix to create a boisterous melody that strips the slumber from our eyes and tethers us to the new day. It is pure, spontaneous, clustered, pandemonium.
But when I’m in my head, I miss it. And my kids miss me. They can sense my disconnect, my reluctant retreat to whatever occupies my mind, even if it is, in nature, a good thing, like passing school so that I can provide for the family.
I become snappy, tense, and say things I shouldn’t. My separation forms a void that my kids desperately struggle to fill, only furthering the divide and fueling my fractiousness. It is oil and water, opposing magnetic poles, fire and gasoline, forces that simply refuse to blend.
As much as I knew I had to be the one to realign my posture, I was unwilling to. Even as I took the kids out on a date as I usually do every Saturday while my wife works, in my mind, I was absent.
When my son asked to play monster trucks, I shooed him away.
When my daughter asked me to read the new book she picked out from the library, I told her to go sound the letters out on her own while I worked.
And when my youngest simply wanted to be held close, I fetched him a bottle, surrounded him with toys to play with, and ignored his whimpers.
The day went on and the precious time we had together slipped through my fingers like sand.
Not until I was driving to church that evening did it hit me that I missed it.
I’ve been more cognizant of that lately. Time escaping me, I mean.
How I wish I could have reached into space and set the sun in reverse.
But the day and its doings were cemented into history, unyielding to my grievances.
During the interlude of worship, the pastor ushered in communion, reading the passage from 1 Corinthians 11 for the Eucharist:
For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.1
I brought the bread and the cup to my lips as the sun made its descent into a cloudless sky, sending piercing arcs of light through the adjacent window. I thought of the disciples dining with Jesus, not knowing the events that were to come, until the day at last conceded to twilight.
How they, too, probably wished to start the day over.
And yet there was something truly remarkable about the bread and the wine that night, something that the disciples, in all their frailty and brokenness, could not even begin to understand.
Even there, in that place, the Son of God was doing a work — speaking in riddles to deaf ears, preparing a way for salvation.
Time cannot reverse.
But sins? Sins can.
Not only that — they would be swept away, as far as the east is from the west.
So there I sat in quiet contemplation, receiving a cup that was meant for me. I felt the day close and the cup run dry, knowing the true cup never would.
I rose from my seat, the sky now fully surrendered to darkness, stars scattered across the heavens, a crescent moon casting pale light on the parking lot. I knelt before my kids, confessing my sins and hugging them tight, feeling the fleeting passage of time and the steadfast grip of mercy.
Their hands reached for mine as we stepped into the night, holding onto the promise that some gifts, like mercy, would endure beyond the reaches of time.
OTHER RECENT POSTS:
1 Corinthians 11:23-26 (NIV)
Appreciate the story and the transparency. It’s a daily battle. I don’t ever want them to view me as distant or take out on them the stresses affecting me. A good reminder.