Racing Through Life

The past week has gone by really fast.  It’s like someone pressed fast forward on my DVR of life and barely watched the show.  Today I cleaned my house for the first time in a week, managed to do five loads of laundry, picked up my kids from their grandparents an hour away, and squeezed in a home depot trip with my husband.

As I sit here typing this post, I am also thinking of my to-do list tomorrow and this week.  I haven’t done any work all week and I have a page long of client phone calls to return, attorneys to call, people I need to meet with, and family activities to juggle through.  I’m so behind I don’t know where to begin.

I’d like to rewind my life’s DVR to this past week for a minute.  It’s been a sad week for us; we put my father in law to rest and celebrated his life as a family afterward.  There is one moment I’d like to press the pause button on; the family gathering after the funeral services.  I can’t stop thinking what an amazing family the Schnellers are.  I’ve been part of their family for nearly a decade and I love how welcoming and accepting they are of people.  They are real southerners I tell you.

The gathering at Sissy’s house was incredible. All the New Orleans food you can imagine was served in honor of Big Eric; from fried chicken, mac and cheese, red beans and rice, pecan pies, king cake, jambalaya, and smothered green beans to krispy kreme doughnuts.  All the things Big Eric loved.  As we all chatted and ate like families do (and this is a big one), I couldn’t help but wonder…. How come we only get together for birthday parties, weddings, and funerals?  Can’t anyone handle 30+ people at their house at any given time? or… Is it too much commitment?  When we actually get together… we have a really good time!

This got my wheels turning.  Actually, I couldn’t get it out of my head all weekend.  Where the heck are we going in life in such a hurry? Some of us are spending more time updating our status and replying to people we barely know on Facebook than we spend gathering with our families; regardless of past disagreements between members.  The truth is that we are all busy with our own lives that we barely press pause on our own show to enjoy what’s going on around us.

I come from a large family in Spain and I grew up in each others house a few times a week.  To date, my cousins are my closest friends and my aunts are like second mothers.  After a short discussion with my husband, we both agreed that life needs to be shared in moments spent with people and not as status updates or comments on Facebook.  We have decided to open our house to our family the first Sunday of  even months.  To provide the opportunity to gather as a family, regardless of who comes and who doesn’t, is important enough to us.

So, this leaves us here, with the parting thought: Is it time to press play on the remote and live life on normal speed without fast forwarding through it? It certainly is for us.