Time Travelers

And just like that, it’s June again. I joked yesterday at lunch: we’re all time travelers, you know? Blank stares. We just happen to be traveling forward. Eye rolls.

But we are.

Seasons are strange things. Twenty-four hour days swim together, all seemingly the same until they are suddenly different. Some stretch endless toward evening. Some escape our clutches, sunlight seeping through clenched fists. Some just pass. And we hardly notice.

We keep making breakfast and washing dishes and looking out that same kitchen window.

And the leaves turn color.

And the branches go bare.

And spring blooms timid.

And then it’s June again.

Yes, seasons are strange things. But memories are stranger. It seems no matter what the season held, we look back with longing on days gone by. We miss what was. We are simultaneously grateful for all that is no longer. We remember things we wish we could forget. We forget things we thought we’d always remember. There is one day in August that feels like yesterday and another day in April that feels a lifetime ago. I can’t tell you everything I did last Wednesday, but I can tell you about a conversation I had in the parking lot of Starbuck’s on October 27.

We keep trying to mark time. Time keeps marking us.

And we yield to what God has done. This God who knew we’d need reminders of what has been. Who knew we’d need invitations to what will be. Who knew that today would be all that we could handle. Who knew that steady and predictable seasons would somehow breed fresh hope.

And we keep laughing. And occasionally crying. And often wondering. And sometimes yelling.

Time keeps its steady pace. It rushes us and drags us and holds us back. And we time travelers, well, sometimes we need to change the scenery.  Sometimes we need to dig our hands into today, to plant something of our own, to let the dirt of it stick under our fingernails. To remind a stubborn memory that a season has passed. Even if we can’t quite see the new one yet.

Because it’s June again.

We are tendered grateful for this place right on the edge. Where it’s no longer spring but it’s still hardly summer. Where possibility dances delicate. Where this thing we’ve planted could bloom or die. Where we fumble forward toward what will be. And we are strangely sentimental toward what has been. Even if we aren’t sure why.

Time travelers. All the way back to a June that hasn’t yet been.