Surreal Life

As I rocked my daughter tonight, in the quietness of her room a surreal feeling swept over me. I looked at myself (not physically, this isn’t some out of body experience tale…well, kind of but not really) and I wondered when I became old enough to be the mother of a toddler. Am I really at this point in life? Diapers, station wagons, play dates, toys constantly exploded all over the living room, little girl tugging at my pant leg demanding my attention? It seems like yesterday that I was a high school student and graduating college was a decade away (much less a decade past). Then I thought of my mother. Does she often ponder the same thoughts about her station in life? Does she feel like the years have passed by too quickly and that she’s not old enough yet to be a grandmother? Does it feel slightly odd to her that she watches her daughter mothering a sweet, yet independent little girl just as she did not so long ago? Pondering the passage of time always leaves me somewhat befuddled and overwhelmed. How can this intangible, man-made device pass so quickly and yet so slowly? How is it that time rules us, and yet we created it (and I’d propose, can’t live without it)? How strange is it that things we waited so long to achieve, once attained are overshadowed by the next thing? Life is surreal, at times. I guess that’s part of the mystery.

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways”, declares the Lord. Isaiah 55:8

Photo: Tired tornado, 2007