The Power of Transformation

I've been thinking about transformation often lately as a mother. I'm one of those moms with 65,000 pictures. This isn't even an exaggeration. What is cooler than technology in terms of storing memories? I love Time Hop and even the functions on the iPhone that allow me to go back in time.

What was I doing this day in 2016? I don't know, but I can find out!

Transformation is defined as a dramatic change in form. The thing is, it's often unrecognizable day-by-day, but instead, extremely noticeable when compared over time.

Lately, the transformations taking place with my kids have been kicking my ass.

It breaks my heart to imagine this little person that I envision is actually not who is standing in front of me.

There have been so many versions of them, and throughout time, they have transformed into new, cooler, better versions.

Transformation is a genuine shock that parents know all too well. We look back and compare pictures, and we can't believe that this new person is our kid.

Oh, the pride. The pure adoration and pain of the process.

The thing is, with our kids, we can't see the changes. They don't happen visibly. We don't notice the inflection points where our newborn becomes an infant and then a toddler and then somehow a kid and a pre-teen and a full-blown adult.

I'll confess, I've always been profoundly aware of last moments. I'm a deeply emotional person, and frankly, I've always been afraid the moment would pass and I wouldn't know.

I think this concept is credited to The Sandlot, but somewhere I read that we played outside as kids for the last time and no one knew.

Gulp.

The streetlights came on and our parents shouted our names, and we went inside. We parked our bikes or threw the ball in the closet and had dinner or went to bed, and I don't know why it steals my breath the way it does, but it really leaves me drawing in as much air as I can to get a revolving breath through my lungs.

That thought is nearly criminal.

Someone call the police and tell them to come get it because it's a public nuisance.

So anyway, I am profoundly aware of these moments and we still don't see them pass with our own children. We don't know.

Transformation sneaks up on you. Time isn't the culprit. It's transformation. The time passes anyway.

But what happens to the unseen and seemingly unmeasurable?

What seems completely unseen and unmeasurable is actually the entire make up of transformation from one thing to another.

We know this to be true.

We see it in our kids, and we have seen it in ourselves.

For me, this has been all I have needed as evidence lately that the things that we do every day, that we think don't carry that much weight or make that much of a difference, actually harness tremendous power over time.

You can't visibly notice anything in the moment or even as the days pass, but holy moly, you look back and you've been made totally new.

This has been my philosophy on making it happen lately. I'll never know today or tomorrow the transformation I'm capable of until I'm already transformed. We are not afforded the opportunity to notice, but the truth is, it doesn't matter.

We don't have to see the millimeters our children grow every morning when they wake up to appreciate that one day they will be taller than us.

We don't have to hear their voices change decibel by decibel.

We could stare at them every waking moment for their whole lives, and we would still miss it because the inflection points don't exist.

I know because I knew it would break my heart, and I have tried not to look away, and it still shocks me just the same.

We don't have to take stock of every waking moment where their actions took them from that squishy toddler to the version of them that stands before us today.

But as you look back, the transformation was substantial and vivid and unimaginably overwhelming. It's SO huge and SO significant, that it's hard to believe we couldn't see it like we were viewing a flip book of every moment and seeing the exact second where things changed.

It's like magic.

We're like magic.

This human experience, where we grow and change and are made new is miraculous.

It's tragic how we change and don't even know it, but just in the seamless nature of being human, it leaves room for so much hope.

Imagine who your kids will become.

Imagine who you will become if you care to.

The power of seemingly invisible changes over time that barely move the meter, the ones you can't measure or see or notate will eventually become a transformation so profound it will take your breath.

In the words of John Lennon:

"Maybe I'm a dreamer... but I'm not the only one."