By Cindy Early

As first time parents of a newborn, among the many changes that have taken place recently, one of the chief among them is my perception of time.  The individual days seem to fly by and yet if I try to think back just a couple of days ago it feels like an eternity. Simple tasks that took no time before have turned into all-day marathons. Attempting to arrive somewhere at a designated time now takes hours of planning. And in the midst of it all, somehow my child seems to have gone from one minute old, to one day old, to one week old, to one month old, and still going.  I wonder where the time went and wish I knew a way to get it back.

So when thinking of a stewardship theme to focus on for the month of September, it is no surprise that I immediately gravitated toward stewardship of time.  When I think about stewardship, one of the first things that always comes to mind is the old offertory prayer:  "We offer to you, what you have first given us, our selves, our time and our possessions."

Our Time. Whenever I prayed this prayer, I always thought of offering time in as devoting specific minutes, hours, days in service to God. Whether this be in worship, prayer/devotion, or charitable work, to me it meant, giving up something else you would rather be doing for yourself, and devoting that time instead in service to God. Yes, this is important. But today I want to invite you to think about another mode of stewardship of time which can be just as life changing--the concept of mindfulness.

Mindfulness is one of the seven factors of enlightenment among Buddhist teachings. Mindfulness is an attentive awareness of the present moment, which includes being in tune with ones bodily sensations, feelings, emotions, thoughts, and perceptions. One of the reasons I chose to have a natural birth was because I felt that I would learn through the experience of labor and delivery, important lessons that would help prepare me for motherhood.  The single biggest lesson I learned was to stay in the present moment. In the early part of the labor I remember thinking that the single contractions in and of themselves were manageable but not knowing how long the whole thing was going to take was difficult. I kept wanting the midwives to check me and tell me how far I had progressed and how much longer they thought it would take. My doula kept reminding me to stay in the present moment and at some point the message sunk in and a major shift took place. I stopped worrying about what was going to happen next. I was more in tune with my body.  I was able to tap in deeply to the support I was getting from my husband and my birth team. And most importantly I was connecting with Caitlyn in the present moment and engaging her through the entire journey of her own birth instead of just thinking ahead to who she would be when she finally arrived. After she was born I could hardly believe it had been 16 hours since my first contraction at 2:00 a.m. Too me it felt like 960 separate minutes, all individual memories I would get to hold onto for a lifetime.

Stewardship always begins with what God has first given us. Perhaps the greatest gift of all that God has given us is time and yet we take it for granted every day, if not every second. Even still as a new mom, I am tempted at times to worry about the future and how we will provide our daughter with everything she needs; or to mourn the past with time flying by so quickly knowing I will never get these precious early days back. But in those moments where I look at her and am totally enraptured by her beauty and vulnerability, or when I respond to her cries with undistracted attentiveness, these are the best moments, when I am truly living in the now. Mindfulness enables us to get the most out of the present moment. It is an expression of gratitude for the gift of time that God has given us. 

As a call to action, I invite you this month to engage in the practice of mindfulness (as much as you can remember, but at least a few times intentionally each week) and share with others what you discover!