Please, Can I Be Young Again?
I was just thinking about how I haven’t written a personal blog post in a while.
I wondered if it is because I just don’t have anything going on in my life, but I know that’s not true.
I decided that I should get back to work and put these thoughts on the shelf for now. But there was still a bit of disappointment lingering as I went back to the data import task I was working on for my company.
Was I disappointed in myself, or just in how little time I’ve had recently to do things like writing?
I’m back home at the moment. Back to the place where it all began for me. Back to where I would return after long days driving fence posts and pounding nails. Life looks a lot different for me now.
Something about it feels just the same, while also feeling like everything has changed. Everyone around me is growing up, growing older, while I still get caught up in the same things I always have.
My youngest brother is almost a teenager, growing like a cornstalk in July, and I’m positive his voice has dropped at least 3 octaves since the last time I’ve seen him.
Life moves a lot slower in small-town Minnesota than it does in Silicon Valley 2.0 aka Raleigh, NC.
You caught me. My mind was drifting again. Like it does every five minutes these days.
I got back to moving words around within our company’s content management system and managed to tighten the leash on my wandering thoughts.
I looked up.
My younger brother (who I fully believe was given the wrong birth certificate when he had the nerve to turn 13 last year!) was standing there —
Holding out a bright green freeze pop.
“Did you get one yet?” he asked.
I wanted to say something quick — “Thanks but no thanks”, or something similar. I’m busy, I don’t have time to suck on a freeze pop. I’m too old for stuff like that.
Instead, my hand reached out and took the pop, as if to tell that boring, self-absorbed, adult part of me —
“If there’s anything you have time for, it’s for the people who love you. If there’s anything you should make time for, it’s for the people you love.”
Thank you, God, for these people. I love them so much. Help me appreciate the enormous blessing each one of them is. I don’t deserve parents and brothers and sisters like the ones I have.
If getting older means forgetting what’s important —
Please, can I be young again?
