Time

To everything there is a season,

A time for every purpose under the sun,

A time to be born, a time to die…

A time to weep and a time to laugh

A time to lose and a time to seek….

--Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

     I spent last Sunday visiting with my mom. She’s 87 (88 in October) and when I ask how she’s feeling, she always tells me she “feels like she’s sixteen.”

     Now that mom is older and time is passing, it is making me deeply aware of time. How much time has passed. How much is left. So, it is important to me to tell my mom things. How much I appreciated everything she and dad did for me, right down to the scrambled egg and bologna sandwiches she used to make for me when I came home for lunch as a teenager. How I always knew mom and dad were there for me and my sister, and how much they meant to me during those years.

     My dad passed away in 1997. I didn’t get the chance to have this conversation with him, so I feel it is important, very important that mom knows these things now. I always mention something about home and growing up. She always says she enjoyed every second of it. Ironing, cooking, cleaning, wiping up this and that, she enjoyed it all. And she told me that she always wanted to be sure we had something we liked when we came home for lunch. And it was important to her that it was always ready on time. Those scrambled egg and bologna sandwiches, served with a great bowl of Campbell’s Soup, would always hit the spot. Even then, going back over thirty years, I knew it. I knew that we were the most important thing in her life, and her job, as a mom, was important to her.

     I think it’s important to tell people things. Important things that matter. Things that will mean something to them, things that they will enter into their heart and keep there. The hardest thing and the simplest thing, is to tell someone you love them. Intimacy is sometimes difficult for people. You don’t want to embarrass them, or yourself, but you just might be surprised. They could very well say they love you.

     So, after I travel down memory lane with mom on a pleasant Sunday afternoon, before I leave, I always look in her eyes and tell her, softly but in a way she knows I mean it, I love her. She always says, “I love you, son, and I’m proud of you.”

     Mom loves me and she’s proud of me.

     And I’m not embarrassed at all.