Once a month, every month, my girlfriends and I meet for dinner to catch up on life, talk about the world’s problems and probably solve them. Since I moved outside of the city, we commit to one dinner one night a month to lean into each other and unpack our worlds. Over the years it has become an iron sharpens iron kind of thing. One of us sharing, the others building, guiding, sitting with… and truly I hold it sacred in my life because, without a doubt, I am a better mother for those dinners. I’m a better wife and friend, too. Their voices are the ones I give the microphone to in my life. When I need to be checked, I know they’ll hold up a proverbial mirror to my face and check me with wisdom and honesty. When I need to be prayed for, I know they’ll storm heaven’s gates. When I need tips on potty-training and progressive sippy cups, they’ll send me shopping links for everything I need before the discussion is even over. Female friendships, to me, are life-giving. I need them and I cherish them.
During our time together last month, we were recapping our busy holiday season and our goals for the new year, and one of my beloved friends shared how she hoped that she could somehow slow down this year and just feel life around her. She said, “I want to actually hear the birds chirp and not just hurriedly go about everything.” And then she shared how she hadn’t made a homecooked meal in a while because she is a single mom, and life had been so busy and constantly on the go which meant that dinners were what was convenient and that was likely found in a drive-through. If you are a parent, you’ve been there. It’s the way it goes in some seasons, but hearing her yearn for a life at a different speed reminded me that isn’t that what we all long for? Weren’t we made to enjoy creation? Isn’t it a privilege to feel the wind and hear the birds and smell the morning dew?
If you have slowed down enough in life to ever experience that kind of slow, I’m sure you’ve found yourself yearning for it again. It’s those small sips of hot coffee from a ceramic mug, the quiet fall of snow while everything else in nature is seemingly asleep, the slow creak of a porch swing as it sways back and forth, the sound of water streaming over rocks.
We’re two months into the new year and my big kids just finished a very long three-week break from school. The time with them was slow and different than our normal everyday routine – mostly indoors with a ridiculous amount of screen time – but I made bread and soups and muffins and homemade hot chocolate. They slept later than usual and we sat together at dinner time, and we talked about an array of things spanning from life events to life lessons and so on. We sat a little longer at the table after we finished eating dinner instead of jumping up to do the next task before bed. Time with them was slow(er) than it had been over the last few months and what it taught me was that the changes we make in our lives don’t always have to be big, seismic shifts that turn everything on a dime. It can be miniscule changes, one-degree shifts that transform our days. It also taught me that the speed of our life derives from the gear my husband and I put us in. We can slow it down just as easily as we can speed it up.
John Lennon once said, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” Since that dinner with my girlfriends, I’ve been thinking about where my feet are planted and what’s happening where they are. I’ve been considering the speed at which I go about life and contemplating how I can slow down just one percent. I’ve been dreaming about springtime and how many Saturdays I will sit by our pond and listen to the fish splash. I’ve been wondering how much longer I can keep my little boy’s feet from growing out of his new size 8 sneakers.
Of all the things that I want to be this year, at the top of my list is a present parent; fully and completely present in this season of time, and in every season. As we inch our way out of the last of winter, if your desire is to slow down this year, I hope that this second month of the year, while the skies are mostly gray and the temperatures are mostly cold in Kentucky, you’re permitted the chance to sit in the tiny corners of your life and dictate the speed in which it will go… the speed in which you will go.
-by Destini McPherson
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