I’m feeling a little reflective this week. It started on Sunday when our pastor preached this sermon about heaven. It continued last night as a dear friend and I discussed how quickly our 30s are passing.  And then, just this afternoon, I read this post on Filling Time with Gratitude and Grace.

The article included yet another deep thought from Ann Voskamp:

I watch the hands move grace on the clock face. I’m growing older. These children growing up. But time is not running out. This day is not a sieve, losing time. With each passing minute, each passing year, there’s this deepening awareness that I am filling time, gaining time. We stand on the brink of eternity.” -Ann Voskamp

What a refreshing perspective on time! Especially when you have little ones about the house, time seems to pass so quickly. Not necessarily the days — filled with diaper changes and feedings and naps and such — but the years. The years pass quickly.

These past four or five years, I have grown comfortable and familiar with being a mom of a preschooler — first with Linnea and then again with Laurel. There are nearly three years between them, but somehow it seems there was no interruption in my era of being a mother of a preschooler.

As that era is now quickly drawing to a close, I present my own little poem about it.

A-Growing Up

My babies don’t look like babies anymore.

Though I swaddle them up, lie them down on the floor;

It’s ridiculous.

Oh, they simply are not babies anymore!

So back I look at pictures taken not long ago —

Back when the littlest one’s curls were tightly so;

Back when the oldest’s baby teeth had yet to go.

And I see these children a-growing up.

‘Tis a precious process I dare not disrupt.

But yes, my babies are a-growing up.