Tick. Tick. Tick.

It is that time of year. For many of us, we are putting our kids back on the school bus and entrusting them to other adults for the majority of their day. Those who homeschool are starting to shift their daily routines. Regardless, change is upon families with school-aged children. 

Our kids go back to school earlier than anyone else's kids we know. They started back last Monday. After breakfast and loading up backpacks, we lined them up for the yearly first-day-of-school photo shoot before they walked down the street to their bus. It was exciting. But also sad.

My wife and I went for a walk last Sunday evening and talked about the tension we felt. 

On one hand, we are soooooo ready to have them back in school. Our days are far less productive with our kids around, and at this point in the summer they are often just "bored" and thus hanging around us asking us what to do and then rolling their eyes when I tell them to go outside. 

On the other hand, our summers are short, and we only have a few of them left before they start working, driving, and shortly after that, moving out. We don't want to wish the time away. Did we use the summer break well? How do we want to use the few breaks we have left with them?

As our 7th graders walked down the street, away from us, we remembered their first ever day of school, when we lived across the street from the elementary school and walked with them almost all the way to their classroom. In just a few years they'll be driving to school instead of riding a bus.

As I hear often, the days are long, but the years are short.

Tick. Tick. Tick. 

My wife is wired in such a way as to always be looking back over her life. I am consistently and strongly looking to the future. And while those aren't bad things, we both often miss what probably matters most: the present. We spend so much of our energy on processing the past, or planning for the future, we often miss exerting our strength towards what we have the most power over; the here and now.

I am convinced that staying present is the biggest battle we actually face. Everything is pulling me away from it- my phone, my email, my finances, my plans and hopes and dreams. My regrets.

Tick. Tick. Tick. 

God has the characteristic of being omnipresent and beyond time (everywhere, all the time). That isn't one of the traits he handed to us when he made us. Our capacity is to be in one place at a time, in one place in time. I think Evil wants to draw us away from the present as much as possible, to keep us from impacting it. 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

What is pulling you away from the present? As you read this, is your child or spouse asking for your intention and attention? How do you need to fight to be present, where and when you are, here and now?