A Tuesday poem~ Fleeting

When infants, our babies seem to be inexplicably ours.

We nourish them, protect them, house them...

And then suddenly, they are kids

and we realize, we remember,

what we were told, what we knew to be true,

before we held them

naked on our chest,

fresh on the scene,

but we maybe forgot

as we diapered and nursed them and soaked in their unhindered newborn struggles.

We remember

that they are not truly ours,

but His, and

that we hold them for a while,

but that He holds them for eternity.

We are raising them to leave the nest,

to stretch out wings

and test their flight worthiness,

and fly the coop

to someday raise their own brood, Lord willing.

We are not raising them 

to keep them to ourselves, 

but to send them out.

And then we'll hope that the time we spent

pouring into them rather than filling our own selfish cisterns

was time well spent, time enjoyed, time not just survived but time intentionally lived out

day by day, minute by minute.