Heading home...

Returning home after a whirlwind encounter with becoming grandparents is a mixed-bag.  It felt reassuring to pull into our driveway this afternoon - and pick up the puppy - and turn on the furnace to fend-off the autumn chill. And, at the same time, we already miss Louis and how he will change in the weeks and months that we cannot be close to visit. Such is another one of those "letting go" realities, yes?

Yesterday, Dianne and I took the day to wander around quietly and let the magnitude of becoming grandparents sink in. On one level, it is very ordinary and happens to thousands of people everyday; on another level, it is unique and sacred to us in profound ways.  For one thing, the waiting and praying was personally exhausting: I slept for 11+ hours after stepping back from the joy of the birth!  

For another, while being in the hospital or shuttling back and forth to our sleeping quarters was a privilege that let us hold our little man before he was even 24 hours old, this experience left no time for us to talk about what we were both experiencing deep within. Both of us are introverts who have come to need one another to help discern the movement of the Spirit. So yesterday, instead of rushing back to work, we wandered and talked and talked and talked about this new and tender reality.

And then we celebrated - with one another.  We celebrated with our children

in Brooklyn, and that was holy ground; now we chose to celebrate as grandparents sitting in a jazz club giving thanks to God that we have one another to celebrate with. I am all too aware that this gift of being together is not something I can take for granted.  So, we laughed and talked and listened in a way that is uniquely our own. And then we drove home...

In an hour, Di will head off to work and I will go to church council.  Life goes on and this, too is a source of thanksgiving.  But I am so grateful that we took some time off to let everything soak in before jumping back in to the groove. As one old timer told me years ago: "You already have all the time that there is; the question is HOW will you use it?"  We seek to savor the joy and that requires slowing down and stepping outside the rush from time to time.  As the wisdom tradition sings:  to everything there is a season... a time to be born and a time to die... a time to weep and a time to laugh... a time to speak and a time to keep silence.