eucharisteo: day 5. //

{the thief.}

the years pass like a thief in the night. they come and then suddenly they're gone, and it's New Years Eve and then it's Valentine's Day and then it's the Fourth of July and you sit down hard, and you say where did the time go.

sometimes the time passes in a serious of huge, momentous bursts. the thieves get clumsy, and they drop pieces of furniture, and they're still hurrying but they're also making a mess in the process. they're moving everything around, leaving you to pick up the pieces afterwards and realize that you don't even recognize where you are. this can be good or bad, a simple redecoration of your life or a ruinous disaster you'd give anything to reverse. either way, the thieves are gone, and you adjust, and the minutes continue to pass.

but sometimes, time is gentle. the thieves are careful perfectionists who remove only the tiniest things, or leave knock-offs behind them, and you hardly notice. you know they've come and gone, but you can almost forget that there ever was a thief, and that the years ever did pass. but then you really start to look around.

it's the things that change, but also don't, that strike the hardest. I'm constantly waking up to the shocking realization of how much my life has changed. the little six-year-old with the sun-soaked blonde hair, as she plunged into a new adventure in a little town in Idaho, would wake up one day, 12 years later, to find herself still here, yet in a completely different world. in a world where the babies she used to hold have become teenagers, and the fields she used to sled on have been built up, and the NSA students that taught her and played with her as a little girl are coming back for their ten-year reunion, and now she's the student, and someday that will be her. and the movie about courtship whose premier she sat in a theater seat and watched, lo those many years ago, is an ancient video-cassette being watched by her college classmates. and the thief knocks the books off the shelves, and leaves you reeling.

but this is the glory. this is the reality of life: that so often, the passage of time happens in such small increments, and so gently, that you hardly know what's happened. because in reality, as the thief goes about his business, you go about yours as well. you age, and mature, and change. the blond hair of the little girl becomes darker and darker, the teeth get straightened, the clothes are bought and replaced a million times over. the student becomes the teacher, the little girl playing in the back rooms of the college becomes the frazzled co-ed taking oral finals on the same floor. the furniture is moved and replaced and sometimes we wake up shocked at just how much, and we remember the way it looked before, but this is good too. it was time for a change of decoration anyway.