Where is Your When?

When is it going to be time?  Last year, for the first time in many years, I decided that 2014 would be the year to say “when.”  As a blended family there were many years when we chose to limit travel, extras and outtings. We had four children, three families to schedule with total (including us) and the last thing any of us wished to do on a weekend was to add another dropoff, coordination, or trip. Our families were committed to keeping children where their activities and our separate families were gathering for the important family gatherings. Our realities included being 8 hours apart from one set of parents and at times 3,000 miles from the other.  The internet access tools were not as strong then, so we were driving these kids back and forth and often camping out waiting for 2 days to pass with others to get us all home on Sunday night.  However this, this year, the year of allowing, the time has come.

This week the little and I, who is now the glorious age of seventeen are traveling in Nashville to the Re:CREATE Conference.  A gathering of Christian creatives it is what it is professed to be, a place to restore, to rejuvenate, and to be who you are with others who “get” you as a creative. ahhhhh. A week of living that space of “time” with my child in ways that are so meaningful.

My favorite scene in a movie is a small one, less rivoting than others, it’s when a secretary teaches a brain injured attorney that he has the ability to say “when” to how much tea.  That life could be altered when you are willing to identify and say where your “when” is. It was a Eureka moment in my heart, for I was living a life that was based on other’s “whens” not my own.  Many of us who are servant hearted willingly go to that place, that place of pleasing, or obeying, or respecting other’s “whens” but not our own.  It sounds victimish, but too often in the South at least, perfectly intelligent, somewhat balanced folks give.away.their.whens.

What are yours about and where is your when?

• when is it time for self care?
• when have you worked enough each day or week?
• when do you take time to restore your heart and mind?
• when do you allow relationships that do not resolve to be let go of?
• when do you get to live the life you desire to live?
• when is it time to be outside my own stuff and be about others?

This year, my Year of Allowing, I am exploring my whens more often.  I am allowing myself the time and thought processes to really look at the choices I make to support the life path I believe God is pointing me to.  You know the fun thing? The more I get in space with that concept, that choosing to be more intentional about my own “whens” as well as the big picture ones and see that today is my life, not tomorrow, or somewhere else, or sometime else…well, my daughter says #livebetterstories and her blog (which is about to be public) is just that….and I am finding that this story of my life is one I’m enjoying curling up to and knowing that each day is another chapter and I don’t want to miss a single one…. it’s time to say “this is the day” and while not all things I imagine can be fit in one day…by allowing the time to be now, more and more of those days I dreamed of are  happening!  How about you? What do you dream of and when will it be time to say “when?”