Don’t Disregard the Best Years of Your Life for Their Pain and Trouble

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I read a Psalm this morning that gave me pause.

It said:

“Seventy years are given to us! / Some may even reach eighty. / But even the best of these years are filled with pain and trouble; / soon they disappear, and we are gone… / Teach us to make the most of our time, / so that we may grow in wisdom.” Psalm 90:10-12 (NLT)

I wonder, how often do we dismiss a season of life due to it’s pain and trouble, when, in fact, we will later see that those very years were the best of our lives?

How often do we fail to make the most of our time?

Many of us choose to live in stress and tension and needless anxiety, when the circumstances themselves are not that bad. We choose to focus on the “woe-is-me” instead of relishing the blessing and abundance in our lives.

We choose to cast our eyes down without realizing that our lives are never going to be any better than they are today. We squander it.

Can we know this in present tense? Is it not, by very nature, a realization to be had in retrospect?

I’m a mom of little ones. My friends in this stage of life are mostly moms of littleones. And I think we all agree, these little ones are exhausting.

It can be hard for any of us to look past that exhaustion and into the eyes of these precious gifts God has given us. These gifts who won’t be little forever. These gifts who long our attention now, when later, it will be us who long for theirs.

I’m pregnant with all the “common complaints” of that condition. How often I fail to soak in this precious time! This amazing miracle!

How often I complain.

As Erin at The Humbled Homemaker says in her post, It’s a New Season of Motherhood

“Before I could even catch hold of my breath between pregnancy after pregnancy after pregnancy and birthing and breastfeeding and diaper changes and potty training and first foods and first words and a million sleepless nights…

They were gone.”

Can I challenge you (and me) today to slow down and cherish the days?

Don’t be thrown by the pain and trouble. It doesn’t mean these aren’t the best days of your life. Indeed, the best days WILL come with those things.

And motherhood carries with it, among the countless joys, a element of suffering. That’s okay. It’s not a deal-breaker.

Realize the riches in your life. Realize the gifts and joys of your current season.

And if you’re young, realize how good you feel. That will not last. So don’t waste it.

“However many years anyone may live, let them enjoy them all. But let them remember the days of darkness, for there will be many. Everything to come is meaningless. You who are young, be happy while you are young, and let your heart give you joy in the days of your youth… So then, banish anxiety from your heart and cast off the troubles of your body…”

Ecclesiastes 11:8-10

This making the most our years starts with making the most of our days. And that starts with making the most of TO-day.

So, even as I limp around the house on a pregnancy-related bum hip, eyes watering from this pain to which I am not accustomed, wrangling my two little sweeties (one of them having a not-so-sweet afternoon), I will remember how good are these days and years.

There is so much here if only I stop to see it.

God, give me the wisdom to see it.

 

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