Sometimes You Say I've Changed...

Jim and I are approaching our birthdays-season,

kindling tender reflection.

Jim is entering a new decade on Saturday💓🙏

Once upon a time our parents were parents of little children,

then, they became parents of adult children,

Then they became parents of adult children with little children

Now they are parents of adult children with adult children 

who are raising the next generation of little children...

and so it goes.

Nothing and no one stays the same for long!

Best to embrace the place/grace we are in,

for where one season is,

another is waiting to be

as long as life remains!

I am completely content in the season I am in,

not because everything is perfect but because

there are enough joys to balance the heartaches.

Thank-you, Lord!

Spending time with our children

and grandchildren is one of 

life's blessed joys, in the season Jim and I are in.

I love how helping to plant potatoes made Grand-kiddos

 feel happy, important and valued...

(the 'taking turns' rule kept it lively, 

with always someone trying to sneak in two 'turns' in a row 😂)

We had eight rows planted in next to no time at all!

Good times 💖

And great opportunity to live out this passage:

 Deut. 6:5-9

And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart

 and with all your soul and with all your strength.

6These words I am commanding you today are to be upon your hearts.

  7And you shall teach them diligently to your children (or grandchildren)

and speak of them when you sit at home 

and when you walk along the road, (or work in the garden)

when you lie down and when you get up. 

8Tie them as reminders on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.

  9Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates.

***

I love how the soft soil beneath their bare feet made them giddy with delight

I love how they still all love gramma's lap 💝 

I love when they can have some one on one grandpa time

 (while gramma cleans up supper dishes)

I love having  special reasons to bake...

 

Sometimes you say I’ve changed, and in a sense, I guess it’s true

Time changes things and I suppose it changes people too

Because perspective, with experience is apt to shift

The older that we grow the more we see life as a gift

The older that we grow the more we care about today

Because we’ve come to know how swift each day-gift slips away

To the permanent residence where centuries amass

Where everything that comes along is just as bound to pass

Where circumstance has always dealt both life’s better and worst

Where stepping stones to wisdom often felt like failure first

Where what we learned has earned a gentler, beholden regard

Because the way to learning it, was often slow and hard

Honing what we admire and desire and respect

And opening our eyes to joys we no longer neglect

As we begin to see without a shadow of a doubt

The certainties that younger people seldom think about

Where threescore year and ten or four was for far older crones

Before we looked time in the mirror and felt it in our bones

Admitting with aha, that time’s dexterous sleight of hand

Is more adept than any trick vain mortal can command

Sometimes you say I’ve changed; far sadder to remain untaught

After a lifetime leased to learn to love the way we ought

After day after day of grace, by mercy’s Hand arranged

Forbid the best that we can boast is that we never changed

© Janet Martin

Ps.90:12

Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.