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Wow! Less than five months left until your son comes home? That went so fast!
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You must be counting down the weeks now!
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It feels like he just left!
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Time has ceased to have its usual course of action during the last 19+ months. I’ve spoken to many missionary parents and this is a fairly common phenomena. One missionary mom referred to this as time moving “fast-slow.”
Fast, as in, I cannot believe that the twenty-four months that stretched endlessly before us at the beginning of this journey are almost at an end. Fast, as in, when did my son cease being afraid to open his mouth to testify? Now he boldly speaks out when he sees opportunities for sharing. Fast, as in, when did my son too quickly become a man?
Slow. So very, painstakingly slowly has each breath passed between my final hug good-bye and when I will next wrap my arms around him!
Fast-slow. There will be days when the minutes stretch and I miss my missionary so much it hurts. Yet, the last 19+ months have FLOWN by! There is so much still yet to do!
For example, when he left, his middle sister inherited his room. He’ll be home for a couple of months before he heads out to college—WHERE do we put him? In the basement? In his old room, bumping his middle sister to sharing rooms for awhile? My husband slept in a storage closet following his mission due to a younger sister claiming his former room, so he doesn’t have much sympathy for my plight. Instead, he laughingly answers my quandary with, “Well, anything our son gets will be better than a storage room!”
If he is staying in the basement, then we need to figure out shelving/portable closet racks for his clothing. And he’ll need a bed. Again, my oh-so-hilarious husband said a camping cot would be fine. However, my husband did sincerely recommend we look into a self-inflating bed. Self-inflating because we both have horrible memories of holding a hair dryer for hours and hours desperately trying to fill an air mattress in the early years of our marriage!
Do I need to reach out to his college and arrange housing? Or, now that he has become a man, do I simply trust that this is something he will arrange for himself? Perhaps he won’t appreciate his overly worried mother interfering?
Do I need to re-wash his clothing that has been in storage bins? Do I need to air out the stuff in the storage bins? Will he even want the stuff in his storage bins now that he is a man? That much-loved stuffed lion he carted everywhere as a toddler may no longer have the same sentimentality!
To read more of Emlee Taylor’s Missionary Mom moments, click here.
You see, the summer months are packed with camping, family reunions, and normal summer fun—once the school year begins again, I will blink and my missionary will be home.
It will be a slow blink. I will try not to look at the calendar too often to see if the days have advanced any more quickly. I will try to remember how quickly the months have flown by as I watch the minutes crawl by these last few months.
Time will continue to move fast-slow.
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Can you see him yet?
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There! There he is!
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I can hardly believe he’s finally home!
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Wow. Those two years flew by!
Growing up all over the world gave Emlee Taylor an opportunity to see the incredible differences the Lord created in humanity; and even better, the passions we all share as members of the human race: love for family, faith, & a desire to make a difference.
Emlee lives life with passion—focusing her time now on raising four children and teaching them to recognize truth and to live true to that truth, regardless of others’ expectations. Emlee is passionately in love with her bestest friend and husband of more than 20 years.
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