The Subjective Year

Technically, time is supposed to be an objective measure. It doesn't have an opinion or mood. It doesn't change with the weather. It can't change its tempo. Even though there are very smart people who invented leap years, minutes, and seconds to keep us calibrated, they do it at precise intervals - not at the whim of somebody whose name was drawn from a hat, for the honor of choosing when or how much to leap. Time just is.

Except...where our subjective interpretation is involved.

Take, for instance, a year. Is it twelve short months? Or is it fifty-two long weeks? Our granddaughter turned three earlier this year, and to have to wait another year before turning four is so impossibly long, she has to help it along in increments ("I am three-and-a-half!"). I, on the other hand, refuse to even acknowledge the passing of another year at warp speed. I am not another year older until it is the hour of my actual arrival into the world. A year left in college seems too much to handle for the twenty-one year old, while the eighteen-year-old who just began would give anything to have only that one year remaining. A young military wife spends the long year of her husband's deployment praying that the months will speed by. Tell that same young wife that she has only a year of life left due to the cancer spreading poison in her body and her fervent prayer is that the days will go so very slowly. Time is objective - until our perspective gives it value.

Our first year here on Maui was learning the rhythm of this island - and the time seemed quick, indeed. The next year dragged, as we lost any sense of rhythm in this or any place. A year ago today, we were moved out entirely from our lovely Ka'anapali condo. A year later, we have begun the process of unpacking in our new home, those inanimate objects which have personality to me, and have been in forced hibernation. It has been a year since we have slept in our own big bed. A year since we ate off our own dishes and sipped from our own glasses. A year since I have painted. A year since I have seen my existing art. A year since we have had a proper home office. It has been nearly a year since our own beloved dog has been with us. And now, one very long and difficult year later, it has all come back together again.

We could spend (waste) our time bemoaning the tough times of the past twelve months, but that would give short shrift to the work God was doing on us in that time. I, after all, want to pay close attention to the lessons He was teaching us in hope that we will NEVER have to be taught them again! So, I need to praise God for the year past - and that the year HAS passed. I need to trust in Him for the year ahead, know that I don't know what I don't know. Above all, I need to remember that time was an invention for man, and that Adam was the one who made it finite because of his choice for a fruity snack. In God's eyes, this is only a vapor, a momentary mist - a blink in eternity.

Amen.