Search

The Last Time

Last July, at a family conference for people in vocational ministry, the speaker said something that caught my attention immediately. Pastor John Stockstill, talking about raising children, said,

“Their character is pretty much set at the age of 5. That’s 250 weekends.”

That thought hit me hard.

I’ve got 250 weekends with Philip until he’s five.

Here’s a poem that Carla shared with me that expressed this well. Warning: could be a tearjerker. My prayer is that all of us will learn to make the most of every moment in life and with our loved ones because we never know when it will be the last.

The Last Time (taken from bellebebes.co.uk)

From the moment you hold your baby in your arms,
you will never be the same.
You might long for the person you were before,
When you had freedom and time,
And nothing in particular to worry about.
You will know tiredness like you never knew it before,
And days will run into days that are exactly the same,
Full of feedings and burping,
Nappy changes and cryng,
Whining and fighting,
Naps or a lack of naps,
It might seem like a never-ending cycle.
 
But don’t forget…
There is a last time for everything.
There will come a time when you will feed your baby
for the very last time.
They will fall asleep on you after a long day
And it will be the last time you ever hold your
sleeping child.
One day you will carry them on your hip,
then set them down,
And never pick them up that way again
You will scrub their hair in the bath one night
And from that day on they will want to bathe alone.
They will hold your hand to cross the road,
They will never reach for it again.
They will creep into your room at midnight for cuddles,
And it will be the last time you ever wake to this.
One afternoon you will sing “the wheels on the bus”
and do all the actions,
Then never sing them that way again.
They will kiss you goodbye at the school gate,
The next day they will ask to walk to the gate alone.
You will read a final bedtime story and wipe your
last dirty face.
They will one day run to you with arms raised,
for the very last time.The thing is, you won’t even know it’s the last time
Until there are no more times, and even then,
it will take you a while to realise.

So while you are living in these times,
remember there are only so many of them and
when they are gone,
you will yearn for just one more day of them.

For one last time.

Join the discussion

More blog posts

Our National Purpose

I’m posting something I wrote for one of our discussion forums in Asbury Seminary. (I’m in seminary, by the way.) I just wanted to...

Connect with Joe