I am sitting in what I guess we call our sun room reading. I call it our sun room because it has a skylight and is sunnier than the rest of the house and I am not sure what else to call it. The wicker chair I am sitting in is across from a curio cabinet on the other wall. I guess it is a bookshelf but I call it a curio cabinet cause it holds more curios than books. It is a bit of a shrine to loved and lost animals in our life.

It is half past five in the afternoon on Saturday and I am beginning to wonder where half of my weekend has already gone.

I know this is a curious way to start an article but as I sat here reading a Walt Longmire novel, I realized just how the novel and the room were making me feel. I guess you could call it nostalgic, but maybe content is as good a word.

As I was reading I was half listening to my daughter in the other room making calls. She and her husband are working on support raising before heading off to the mission field. My wife is in our den also reading and I can hear the soft music playing over Alexa she likes in the background.

This is not necessarily a content time in my life and I was wondering why I felt that way. May be why my first thought was to call it nostalgic, as I listened to the sounds from the other rooms, I realize I am content with the moment.

I move pretty quickly most of the time and have a lot going on. I do not do a good job of living in the moment. I tend to live months out due to my many work projects and deadlines. I realize that it makes me live most of my live many months in the future. It is probably why life seems to go by so quickly.

I feel this more and more these days and I find myself wanting to savor moments more as well.

I am sure a lot of this comes from getting a bit older, and the fact that I have been taking stock of life a bit more of late.

I grew up in small towns in Texas where life moved slowly, but there was a flavor to life that you do not get in the city. In the city everything is fast paced, and there is little savoring of the moment I realize.

I think we live our lives now at a break neck pace. We try to take vacations and cram moments to savor into our hectic lives. I do not hear a lot of people feeling the way I did when I grew up. Let me give you a glimpse;

I remember sitting in my back yard listening to the cicadas song in the spring, typically swinging back and forth on a porch or yard swing.

I remember walking down dirt roads with friends doing nothing more than enjoying the company and the sound of rocks on the road under our feet.

I remember sitting on the bank of a river not far from my house listening to the deep croak of frogs as afternoon shadows grew long just before nightfall.

I remember the deep darkness around me and the bright stars above on a country night without the city lights around to ruin the view.

We all have these moments where we actually take time to savor the here and now and not allow the moment to be broken by tomorrow. Tomorrow will come soon enough and will have moments of its own if we will take the time to enjoy them.

What I am talking about cannot be found behind the glow of a phone or computer screen. They are only experienced viscerally. They require a tactile feeling that one remembers long after the moment has passed. It is heat or cool, light or dark, silence or sound, it is something that imbeds deeply within not only our minds but our souls. It is a contentment with the moment that we allow our selves that does not fade but lingers on and stays with us long after the moment passes.

I think we must take time to ask ourselves if we are taking time to ever just be content with the moment? Or are we just moving from moment to moment as quickly as we can trying to experience everything as quickly as possible.

Taking time to soak in and savor moments provides the content for memories that are not fleeting but come out at the most needed times in our lives. Like I said, this is not a content time in my life, but being able to take this time right now and be content with the moment…well that is good enough for right now.