The Days are Long, but the Years are Short

I saw that quote on a friend's blog yesterday, and it captures perfectly how I'm feeling today. Faithie had her first day of first grade yesterday, and Peanut started kindergarten today. Here I am at home with just C-Ray and Little One. I would say that it is very quiet here now, but in reality it's not. The two of them are making just as much noise as all four usually do right now. But I digress.

I was thinking yesterday about the "early" days of mommyhood- particularly right after C-Ray was born, and we had three children under the age of three. There were days where I felt like the walls of my house were literally closing in around me, and I would be trapped in the chaos of three infant/toddlers forever. But, they didn't and I wasn't. Just four short years later, two of them are in school. The days of them being here, at home, solely under our watch and influence are gone and I can't quite figure out how they went so fast.

I sat eating breafast with C-Ray and Little One after returning home from the school this morning and questioned myself. "Did I do enough for them in that short time? Did I prepare them well enough? Did I shape their character in a way that will give them a solid foundation for all the things they will begin to encounter now? Have I bathed them with enough prayer?" I found myself being challenged by Jochabed, the mother of Moses and by Hannah, the mother of Samuel. Both of those women were given only a few years with their young children before they turned them over to someone else's care. Jochabed was more or less forced to give Moses to be raised in the pagan household of Pharaoh and Hannah chose to give Samuel to be trained in service to the Lord. How intensely must those women have trained their sons in the things of the Lord in the few short years they had with them, knowing that it was all they had? Do I have the same ferver, the same intensity, knowing that my time of profound influence with my children is relatively short as well?