The kids go back today. You know how that makes me feel, so I won’t go into it again. However, I do have a feeling of great satisfaction over the memories we’ve created this week.

When you’re dealing with little children, you’re just never sure what’s sticking. I mean, they’re really young. Will they remember any of this? Assuming not, my concentration has always been to make sure they come away from time spent with us just feeling loved. That’s all.

And yet, that’s everything.

This time, though, Lilli has been running in, from whatever she’s doing, and saying,

“Can we make cookies like we did last TIME?”

“Remember when we took pictures with the horses, and I wore my princess dress and showed them my princess bag? Can we do it again like we did last TIME?”

“Can we ride in the truck like we did last TIME?”

For whatever reason, girlfriend puts the emphasis on the “time” part of that phrase, and really, I think she’s onto something. It’s the time invested in all of those activities that made them lodge into her memory. It will be the time invested this week in making s’mores, at night, in Papa’s new firepit, Maddie and Papa taking her sledding in her first snowy experience, making peanut butter blossoms with Mimmie, discovering the joys of Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham, and decorating the remains of the Great Gingerbread House Disaster of 2013, that will keep those things fresh on her mind when she next returns.

I looked deep into the face of her baby brother last night, as I wrestled him down to change his diaper. I tried to capture an almost 9-month snapshot and file it in my memory, wondering what he is filing away in his own. Like his sister before him, I pray that he will just feel loved, loved, loved, until one day he says…

I had fun this TIME at your house, Mimmie. Can we do it again next TIME?

 

“Above all, keep loving one another earnestly…” 1 Peter 4:8 ESV