“It’s hard to live at the pace of time,” Tommy likes to say. He usually reminds me of this when I’m restless for the future or when I’m bemoaning a change that forces something I love into the past tense.

Jack is an entire year old today. Twelve months—gone, vanished, like dandelion seeds in the wind. No longer an infant. Past tense.

It’s hard to live at the pace of time. 

When he was a couple weeks old, squawking at me through the night, I longed for him to be a few months older so I could get some sleep. Now I ache for the tiny baby that would fall asleep on my chest every morning around 4 o’clock.

It’s hard to live at the pace of time. Hard to be content where we are. Oh, but I’m trying.

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There are few guarantees in life, the surest one being that it’ll someday end. In my youth, I blithely assumed I would eventually become a mother. It seemed so obvious. I can still picture the look on Tommy’s face when I told him I wanted eight kids. We were seventeen, sitting on the bleachers at our high school, rattling off plans for the future with the speed of a Rolodex.

Ten years later, we sat in terror in a doctor’s office receiving the news that our baby’s heartbeat had stilled. As months and then years rolled by, it slowly dawned on me that motherhood wasn’t a guarantee. It wasn’t some decision I could check off like an application to college. 

 Miscarriage and infertility upended who were we were and who we would become. The journey simultaneously toughened us up and increased our capacity for outward sensitivity and compassion. I know with certainty, however, that living through uncertainty changed the kind of parents we are today. 

 Last January, it felt more like a dream when a sweet baby was placed in our arms. Jack Robert wasn’t some guarantee, a thing on the to-do list, an item picked up in the produce department. He was a miracle. A gift. I couldn’t even imagine how he would change me, I only knew that he would. 

So, before I forget, here are a few things I’ve only begun to grasp in the last year.

1. Parenthood changes my priorities and dreams.  

We all have ideas of success, and a ticking clock inside of us that drives us to pursue those ideas. To fight for our dreams. Make plans. Envision who we want to be.

Becoming a mom hasn’t meant the cessation of my dreams. Otherwise, I wouldn’t spend every nap-time feverishly writing at my desk. But motherhood has altered the limited, “me” focus of my priorities. 

The other night, Tommy and I left Jack at home with his grandma and went to a movie. Long story made ridiculously short: in the final scene, a man dies in order to save his child. Afterwards, we were driving home, soberly reflecting on the film and all the popcorn and Coke we’d consumed, when Tommy said, “I would do anything, give up anything, to make sure Jack can grow up to live a happy, full life.” 

And it’s true—real love exists when the joy of another person becomes more important than our own. 

I still have my dreams. But if ever called upon to choose between Jack’s dreams and my own, I choose his. Gladly.  

2. Parenthood changes how I view each day.

I’ve spent so much of my life wishing it away. It’s sobering to reflect on it now, to glance back in retrospect and observe my own impatience. I was desperate to finish high school. Then eager to get through college. Plan a wedding. Finish residency. Move far away. Buy a house. Get a new job. Chop chop! 

Life always seemed like something I would do in the future, a destination I would eventually reach. All the while, life was under my nose. It was in every day of the calendar I scratched off in my excitement to reach the end of the semester. 

 For the first time I can remember, I don’t want anything to change. I don’t wish life away. In Jack’s changing smile, I perceive time moving in a way I couldn’t before. I used to think life grew like a redwood tree, any changes imperceptible to the naked eye. More theoretical than actual.

 But in parenthood, time leaps forward like a wildflower sprouting out of the ground. Every day the bud grows bigger. This sweeping passage of life and time has become painfully, unarguably real.

As the poet Cesare Pavese sagely said, “We do not remember days, we remember moments.”

My goal is to cherish a thousand moments. To pause and hold onto this minute here—cradling a little boy against me in the middle of the night. Because it is here today; perhaps it won’t be tomorrow.

3. Parenthood changes the way I look at other people. 

When seated on a crowded public bus, it’s easy to observe only flaws in the people elbowing us for more room. People can be obnoxious, smelly, obtuse, ignorant, selfish. It’s easy not to feel much warmth towards the lady coughing on you. But lately, I’ve been struck by the thought that every stranger was once someone else’s baby. 

The neighbor with wildly different political beliefs.

The guy in the Chevy Cavalier with terrible driving skills.

The coworker with loud opinions and no work ethic. 

These people that frustrate us, hurt us—they once had a toothless smile and chubby cheeks.

This commonality of our beginnings doesn’t mean that we should let people walk all over us. It doesn’t mean we need to give our time and energy equally to all. But it does help remind us that everyone is human and deserving of compassion. Even the most unlovable was once lovable. 

4. Parenthood reminds me of my identity. 

Jack shares the brown-green color of my eyes and my father before me. In those eyes, I see the physical thread that ties me to those who came before me, and to those who will go on living when I’m gone. I belong to them and to this chain of life, one generation to the next. 

And I belong to God, who made all—generations and individuals. Who crafted the threads that bind me to family members and to every other human being who has ever lived and will ever live.

I believe that one of the clearest evidences that we’re created in the image of God is the love a parent has for a child. This capacity for selfless, overwhelming love in the face of pain and adversity topples any theory that suggests we’re nothing more than cosmic mistakes with big brains.

I’m still at the dawn of parenthood. I’ve only begun to understand what it means to love a child, but I know it’s God-given and God-sustained—the type of love that compels parents through sleepless nights and toddler tantrums. Love that endures through a teenager’s failing grades and lazy habits and poor friend choices. Love that survives a grown child’s drug addiction. 

The love of human parents often fails. It is too often a pitiful shadow of divine love. 

I had imperfect parents just as Jack has imperfect parents, but our identity is ultimately rooted in a divine Father who loves us perfectly and completely.

My son reminds me that I’m made in the image of God, just as he is. 

As I write, Jack is asleep in his crib, fingers curled around a stuffed lamb that rattles when he stirs. He’s still so small and new with only a handful of teeth and no vocabulary. Every day he changes, and every day I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. Just when I think I’ve figured out a phase, we’re on to something new. 

And though I seem to live life in a perpetual state of being caught off-guard, I’m sure of this—there will be more than four simple ways that this journey transforms my perspective. Some lessons will be harder than others. Some challenges will surpass my ability to rationalize or understand.

But no matter what the future holds, no matter what uncertainties lie in wait, I must remember—it’s all a gift. 

It’s hard to live at the pace of time, but I’m trying.