Only as fast as this moment

How is your relationship with time?

Do moments crawl like a sleepy snail sipping on melatonin? How often do you find yourself saying, “I can’t believe it’s already [insert the day, month or year]”?

What is your impulse when you look at the clock and the little numbers staring back dictate whether you’re ‘late’ or have even more time to wait?

Where do you feel that word — wait — in your body? How about ‘urgent’?

Invitation to try on a few more and notice what happens inside:

Last minute // Too much time on your hands // Time’s up // Gotta kill some time

Why do you write like you’re running out of time? (If you get the reference, consider us friends).

I ask because part of clearing the way for Love in my own life has been restoring a secure relationship with time.

Love once told me, “We have time” and since then, my being has been recalibrating. Learning to take deep breaths. Shifting from rushing to resting. From scarcity to plenty. From forecasting to participating.

Continually reorienting to time as a lake, rather than a river (might I suggest Braiding Sweetgrass for more wisdom like this).

And as I practice wading in her gentle rhythm, I’m remembering to make space for her to move without pushing her along or demanding that she slow down. Just being with her and what she and Love bring to me.

Then I had a baby. And you know what everyone and their sweet mother says to new parents?

“Enjoy this time — it goes so fast.”

By the time Bloom was just two weeks old, I’d heard it from just about everyone. It was like a Disney movie where every character popped out of their little doors and windows right on cue to declare what seemed like an irrefutable truth.

The cultural script sent my system spinning. My calibrations were all kinds of messed up as I gripped and grasped onto moments that suddenly felt fleeting and wispy.

A part of me hated that phrase because she was afraid of it being true. She felt afraid of not having enough time which blocked me from receiving Love and experiencing the time I had.

Every type of twisted, I shared my inner experience with my husband who, with all the ease in the world said,

“Time can only go as fast as this moment.”

A breath. A deep breath. That part eased at hearing the Truth.

As I exhaled, a wave of Love washed over my system. A lapping wave like at the edge of a lake.

I still hear folks saying how fast time goes almost every time I’m out and about. A symptom of our culture’s relationship with time. Now, instead of getting swept up, I respond,

“Time can only go as fast as this moment.”

And you know what I almost always get in response? A breath. A deep breath.