The Gift of Your Presence

Yesterday I was having a great conversation with one of my clients. We were talking about our children and how fast they grow up. She is a young parent with one child and I was the older parent with three high schoolers and three grown children. One of the things that she said to me was: “I’m afraid that if it’s always just him and me, he will be so tired of me that he will not be able to wait to leave.” For a moment I was floored! Then I realized that I have a totally different perspective.

We’ve all heard the old adage: “Absence makes the heart grow fonder!” This may sound cute in relation to a couple who has been around each other so much that they are beginning to take each other for granted. Other than that, it is really the opposite that is true. The more time we spend with each other, the fonder of each other we become.
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We sat in my bedroom at the beginning of the day. We try to start the day with devotions and prayer, but today we were moving in slow motion. Deanna, my oldest daughter, asked me what my schedule was and I told her that I had to be at work by one o’clock.

“Mom,” Mikayla was whining a little, “you’re never home! And when you are at home, you’re not here!” She was really upset. “I want you to spend more time with us. I want to do something fun with you!”

“Honey, I am home a lot of the time.” My first instinct was to defend myself. “What do you mean, ‘when you’re home you’re not here’?”

“You’re on the computer or on the phone making appointments or something.” I knew that she was exaggerating a little and the word “never” was inserted in order to express her feelings – which were valid. So I tried to hear her heart.

For a few minutes I thought over the last couple of weeks. She was right in that I had been really busy with work, the coffee shop and the regular home management. We had been trying to catch up on laundry after our machine had been broken for a couple of weeks. We had also been making up for lost income and higher bills due to the “big freeze” recently. In other words, life had been happening.

“I have an idea.” I announced to all three girls. “Why don’t we all do something fun today. Let’s get our cowboy hats and boots on and go out to the overlook and just take some fun pictures.”

Suddenly the room lit up. All three of my daughters were suddenly excited. They rushed around upstairs for a few minutes getting the necessary props and putting on the “costumes” and then we were off. We spent the next hour and a half at the overlook just outside of town. The weather was perfect and the breeze was just enough to make some really cool pictures for our Facebook pages.

At the end of our photography session, we took the camera to the Cornerstone Coffee Shop where the girls proudly showed Dad. Our “girls day out” became the focus of conversation and comment amongst the family and several customers during the course of the day.

I had also realized something really important: my daughters needed and wanted my presence in their lives more often; that they needed my attention, my real presence, not just my body located at home. They really just wanted to spend time with me…doing something together. You’d think that in home educating, stuff like this would happen all of the time. Unfortunately, we get caught up in life, tasks and schoolwork; forgetting the time. We forget that only in quantity will we get quality.

I praise God every day that my children are fond of me. I’m so ecstatic that they want to spend time with me and think it is cool to hang out with mom. I’m glad that they tell me when they are missing that time with me and that they want more of it. I wish I could split myself into three sometimes so that that I could make sure that their time with me was enough.

Lord, give me the time I need for my kids. Show me how to spend more time with them. Help me to recognize when to set life aside and “gather my chicks” for a time of fellowship with them.

“See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” Eph 5:15, 16 (KJV)