The Last Hour of Alone

It is 3:00 pm on Friday afternoon.   May 29, 2013.   Two of our three children are at their grandparents' house - six hours away - for Spring break week.  Our seventeen-year-old son stayed back for lifeguard training this week.  This afternoon he drove himself to the community center to play basketball.  His dad is at work.  I'm on the computer.  And it dawns on me.  This is it.  This is the last time I'll be home by myself for a while again.
And I'm checking Facebook.  Really?  I tell myself I need to get off.  I look around and think, "well, what DO I want to do this last hour at the end of this week?"  I can't think of it.
I've been listening to Spotify  (all week).  It's been great.  I've been cleaning, painting, working, you know - productive things...
Gungor's "Dry Bones" is playing.
My friend and I prayed together just this morning...
As I scroll my page, a post or two reminds me of an online friend, April Karli, and I realize I haven't seen her posts lately.  Maybe it's been months.  Is she off FB?   I search.
Nope, she's still here.  She just posted her own blog two hours prior!  Her blogs have greatly encouraged me in the past.  I scroll her page.  She's notorious (to me) for sharing other writers' interesting, encouraging, and thought-provoking blogs or articles.  I've never met April in real life.  She lives in Texas and I'm not sure about Texas.  But I like April.  I keep scrolling.   I find two blogs she's shared about teen boys.   I have two teen boys and I always want to be a better mom to them.  I always feel like I could do better.  In fact, during Spring Break I was reading the book, "Boys should be boys" by Meg Meeker (great book!), wondering if I am too late?  I want the absolute best for them!  I think of that often.  Pray for it often.  God show me and show them! This is every mother's prayer, right?

Three years ago at Dunbar Cave
Josh-14  Tyler-11

They are now seventeen and fourteen; I just love them wholeheartedly.
So I read the blogs.  I'm crying.  Then...I'm bawling.
And now- I'm typing about it.

Ann Voskamp's page is still up playing the piano, and I haven't even finished reading the full post yet!  I had to pause because it was so overwhelming.   It's an awfully good feeling.  But so hard.  But I know now that this is exactly how I would choose to spend my last hour.  I want it to sink in.  I want time to drink it in.  I want to know.  I want my boys to know.  I want my daughter to know.  How this LOVE is.  This love that pierces the heart and hallows the soul.  That digs deeper, and deeper, and becomes always more meaningful.  Always more beautiful.  Oh, how I long to feel it!  The growing.


And I cannot read this post my sister sent me without crying: http://www.aholyexperience.com/2013/01/how-to-be-the-parent-you-want-to-be-40-things-every-child-must-know-before-they-leave-home/

So, I pause, and I read on.  I cry.  I read.  I cry on.  I count it all as gain. And as Carol Kuykendall says, "the hurt is a good hurt.  The pain is a good pain."  And as strange as it may seem, I want to FEEL it.  So...I do.   And I'm truly thankful for it.
Bettered by it.
Battered by it.
Humbled because of it.
Thankful beyond measure.
God knows.

Oh, how He must know.