Borrowed

Naples, Florida

I’ve been thinking about all that I have borrowed in my life.

Borrowed and returned, of course.

Because that’s what we do, right?

We return what is not ours to keep.

We may return it reluctantly.

We may long for it after it’s gone.

But when it’s time, it has to be returned.

That exquisite sunset in Naples, Florida.

The one I watched four nights in a row,

as if it might stay.

I couldn’t resist going back years later

to bring my sons to see it for themselves.

Borrowed. 

The newborn smell of my first son.

The way my hair twisted through my youngest son’s fingers while he dozed.

My own mother’s arms around me.

Borrowed.

Borrowed.

Borrowed.

And then… returned.

Like the lovely elasticity my face once had.

Borrowed. 

A friendship I once thought would remain,

that slowly, quietly changed

until it wasn’t what it had been.

Borrowed. 

The pets I’ve loved and lost.

Colonel. Sasha.

Borrowed. 

My first car, a Chrysler Cordoba,

that carried me through sixteen

and, in the end, gave itself up

so I could walk away without a scratch.

Borrowed.

The first day I walked into a new job,

unsure, hopeful, and becoming someone I had not yet met.

Borrowed. 

My future husband’s expression as I walked toward him,

already waiting.

Borrowed.

The look on my son’s face

the first time he told me

he thought she might be the one.

Borrowed.

 Even the things I would not have chosen.

The hard seasons.

The stretching.

The uncertainty.

Borrowed, too.

To everything, a season.

A time to receive.

And a time to release.

There is evidence that I was once the possessor

of so many gifts.

Some of it lives in photographs.

Some in the memories of others.

But most of it… 

Most of the evidence lives quietly within me.

In what softened me.

In what shaped me.

In what I carry, even now.

Nothing from my life is missing.

It has simply been returned.

And what remains…

is not absence,

but a life marked

by everything I was given

and asked to hold

for a little while.

And I am grateful to Him

for trusting me with every bit of it.