We tend to mark our lives by world events that change history. For me, these are the 1967 Six Day Arab Israeli War, the Lebanese Civil War, the Twin Towers, and the Covid Pandemic. Yet, I firmly believe that our lives are actually lived for the quiet, intimate moments that mark not our calendars, but our hearts: the days our children were born, their first step, their first word, and their first day of school. And when our children grow, we remember those moments with a touch of melancholy: the day they get their driver’s license, the day we drive them to college, and the day they marry, and the day they have their children. And the cycle begins anew.
We realize that it is in those quiet moments that each of us has the ability to make our lives extra-ordinary. One of our ministers in a sermon asked us the question, “do you remember, can you visualize an in-between quiet moment when you knew your expected was fixing to be unexpected, when you knew your life was going to change?
One precious moment I poignantly recall happened while babysitting my oldest grandchild as a two-year old. I had been rocking her to sleep and was transferring her to my bed, swaying back and forth towards my destination. At the instant of relinquishing her limp warmness to the quilted bed, her little arms clamped around my neck. We both lay down together. Her surrendering eyes fluttered closed for sure this time. Our heads landed side by side, face to face. Her soft, sweet baby breath tickled my nose. I remember telling myself, “don’t forget this moment. It will never happen again just like this.”
And it hasn’t, four granchildren later. My grandmother landmark moment, that’s what it was, designating a new direction, a new path, a blessed new responsibility.
What in-between sacred moments of the heart have marked your life?
But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.