Just a Phase

A few years ago, I went to an Orange Conference. I went to learn about curriculum and how to effectively do ministry for youth and children.

I learned something much more meaningful and something that has had a much longer reaching impact on me.

I learned to see childhood as a phase. The whole conference orbited around the parenting trope of “it’s just a phase,” which is used to explain away black clothing and pink hair, most of the time. The conference instead decided to use the term to explain all of childhood.

It seems like a basic understanding of reality to say that childhood last s for a finite amount of time. “You only turn, thirty once,” is factual, but it is also true. The same goes for 2 year olds, 4 year olds, and seventeen year olds.

Amanda and I hadn’t had Annabelle yet, so the conference didn’t impact me as a parent, but rather as a minister. The teaching has stuck all in my brain and every single night, morning, and afternoon I find myself muttering “it is just a phase.”

This doesn’t make me feel better (“I am so glad she will grow out of it!”) but rather it makes me feel like I am on a roller coaster that is going too fast. I find myself try to wring out every drop of every moment with my kid. Instead I find myself cherishing that she takes so long to climb into her car seat or that she begs to get “coffee,” with me.

I know this sounds like a humble brag, “oh man, I am sooooo present with my kid…” and obviously I am speaking in generalities, and since I own this domain I get to make myself sound really good ;)

But here is my confession: I don’t treat anyone else like this, and I should. I only get one chance to be this husband to this wife in this “phase.” I miss out on so many opportunities whenever I am not present. We fool ourselves when we act as if the days we live are not auspicious. This is the only day we get to live this day, these emotions, these feelings, this weather, etc.

More than “carpe diem,” more like, “גַּם זֶה יַעֲבֹר” and a fear of waste has been guiding me. I’ve talked before about a mindset of abundance and this is just another aspect of that mindset. We only have today to live today and that is everything. We have so much in these 24 hours— what could you accomplish? How could you feel, grow, change? Wring this sponge dry!