On waiting for what’s coming, grieving what’s gone, and learning to live in the only moment that actually exists 🌿✝️
There’s a song—alternative rock, 1984, The Smiths—and its title has been living rent-free in my soul for years: How soon is now?
It’s not just a question; it’s a feeling. A pull. A tension. A quiet ache that whispers every morning when the coffee’s still hot, and every night when the to-do list is still unchecked.
I want things to happen. I want to see the harvest. I want to stand in the Sunday that all this Friday has been building toward.
But then Holy Week shows up, uninvited yet perfectly timed, and it flips the question on its head. It doesn’t ask me about ambition or purpose or the future I’m sprinting toward. It asks me something softer, something harder to answer.
It asks me about 5am.
Plastic eggs. Pajamas. Three kids who still believed in magic.
And a dad, standing in the backyard in the dark, hiding eggs in bushes and under porch steps—completely unaware he was living inside a moment he’d spend years trying to get back to.
🥚 The 5am Nobody Appreciates Until It’s Gone
You know the morning I’m talking about.
If you’ve had it, you know.
It’s early. It’s cold. It’s ridiculous. And it’s one of the greatest moments of your life—you just don’t know it yet.
The kids come running, baskets swinging, eyes wide, screaming over every egg like it’s actual treasure. You’re standing there, coffee in hand, tired, half-present, thinking about the errands you need to run and the emails you need to answer.
Half in the now. Half in the how soon.
And then the years go. The kids grow. The egg hunts fade quietly, not with a ceremony but with a slow, heartbreaking disappearance.
One Easter morning, you wake up and realize—the last egg hunt already happened. You just didn’t know it was the last one.
You didn’t hold it long enough. You didn’t breathe it in. You didn’t stop and say:
“I know what this is. I know how fast this goes. I’m going to be completely, entirely, devastatingly HERE.”
The Easter Bunny still visits our house. Gift cards now. Chocolate bunnies. Grown kids who still show up—and that’s its own kind of beautiful.
But the eggs are in a bin. The backyard is quiet. And the dad who used to hide them isn’t a young dad anymore.
🌊 What Your Parents Were Thinking
Here’s the part that wrecked me: I started thinking about my own parents.
Watching me and my brother drift—the way kids drift—away from family vacations, holiday traditions, and all the moments they built with their own tired, early-morning, completely-underappreciated hands.
What were they thinking?
Were they standing in their own backyard, watching the eggs get harder to hide, watching the baskets get replaced by car keys and college plans, wondering where the 5am went?
Of course they were.
Every generation of parents stands in the same backyard, hides the same eggs, watches the same kids grow, and feels the same quiet grief of a season ending before they’re ready to let it go.
And every generation of kids—including us—drifts. Not out of cruelty. Not out of ingratitude. Just out of the unstoppable momentum of becoming.
We were busy becoming. While they were busy grieving.
And now we are them.
Standing in the backyard. Holding the eggs. Watching the drift. Wondering—did I appreciate it enough?
Yes. And no. Honestly—both.
✝️ What Holy Week Actually Teaches About Time
Here’s where Easter stops being nostalgic and starts being surgical.
Jesus knew. He knew exactly how fast it goes. He knew exactly what was coming. He knew that the dinner on Thursday was the last one. He knew the walk in the garden was the final one.
And knowing all of that, He didn’t rush the meal. He didn’t grieve Sunday before Friday had even arrived. He didn’t miss the room He was in by living in a room that hadn’t happened yet.
He was HERE. Completely. Entirely. Devastatingly here.
That’s not a small thing. That’s the whole thing.
🔥 The Tension Nobody Admits
Here’s the honest confession—the one that lives underneath the ambition and the purpose and the years of building:
I am caught between two gravitational pulls.
Pull 1 — The Future 🔥
How soon is now? I want to see it. I want to live in it. I want the Sunday that all this Friday has been building toward.
Pull 2 — The Past 😔
The eggs in the bin. The 5am backyard. The moments I was half-present for. The seasons I didn’t hold long enough.
And caught between those two pulls is the only place life actually happens.
Right here. Right now. Tuesday morning. Holy Week. Coffee getting cold.
This moment—which will also become a memory faster than you’re ready for.
🌱 How Soon Is Now — The Answer
The Smiths asked the question in 1984. I’ve been asking it for years.
And Holy Week—of all places—finally gave me the answer.
Now is now.
Not a riddle. Not a deflection. The actual answer. ✝️
The future you’re building toward is real. The purpose is real. The Sunday is coming.
And.
The grown kids who still show up for chocolate bunnies—that’s a moment. Right now. Today.
The new memories being made—the ones that don’t look like 5am egg hunts but are quietly, beautifully, their own kind of sacred—those are moments.
The three years of renewal—the showing up, the building, the believing—that’s not just the path to the destination. That IS the destination.
You’re not waiting for your life to start. Your life is the Tuesday morning. Your life is the cold coffee. Your life is the Holy Week tension between grief and hope.
How soon is now?
Now is already here. It’s the only place anything real has ever happened.
And it’s going—faster than you know, faster than you’re ready for, faster than any of us ever appreciate—until it’s the eggs in the bin. And the quiet backyard. And the memory of a 5am that felt exhausting then but feels like treasure now.
🙏 Pray This Tuesday Of Holy Week
Father—
Thank You for the 5am mornings I had. Thank You for the ones I half-showed up for—and the grace that covered the half I missed.
Thank You for grown kids who still want chocolate bunnies. Thank You for new memories that don’t look like old ones but are just as sacred.
Forgive me for living so far in the future that I miss the Tuesday You actually gave me. Forgive me for living so far in the past that I grieve what You already redeemed.
Help me be HERE. The way Jesus was HERE at the table. The way He broke the bread slowly. The way He looked at the faces around Him—and loved them in the room—while the room was still happening.
That’s what I want.
Not just the Sunday. The Tuesday too.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.
💪 The Bottom Line
The eggs are in a bin. The Sunday is coming. The kids still show up. The purpose is real. The years aren’t wasted. The 5am wasn’t wasted.
Nothing was wasted.
And right now—this Tuesday, this coffee, this Holy Week, this moment between the Palm Sunday behind you and the Easter Sunday ahead—this is it.
This is the life.
Right here. Right now.
How soon is now?
Now is already happening.
Do not miss it. 🌿💪✝️