Time Well Spent Part 2
February 2, 2026
Time Well Spent Part 2
I was never supposed to become the person I am today. That person was buried somewhere around age seven, covered over by school schedules, adult expectations, and the relentless push to grow up. But this morning, sitting with my coffee and journal, I realized something: I’ve spent the last forty years trying to find my way back to that child—and the hours I’ve given to that search are time well spent.
When I was very young, time stretched into infinite horizons. On long summer days, I’d complain, “Mama, I’m bored. What can I do?” She always had the same answer: “Why don’t you get some paper, pencils, and crayons and draw something?” That simple suggestion unlocked worlds for me.
My father’s white dress shirts came back from Chin’s Laundry, neatly folded and wrapped in paper bands. Inside each shirt was a 10x8-inch piece of white cardboard—perfect for artwork. Those rectangles became my tickets to those other worlds.
I drew for hours, dipping into an inexhaustible well of imagination that all children possess. Castles and kings, queens and animals, cowboys and stagecoaches, Indians and teepees. I drew the exteriors and interiors of palaces, knights on horses, circus performers, and acrobats. I drew faces and trees, sky, and clouds. Time dissolved when I was creating. I became timeless.
I still lose myself this way today, not through drawing as much, but through reflection and writing. Sitting with my thoughts, I have the same feeling I had as a little boy, drawing on cardboard. Images flow. Memories cascade, one after another, teaching me, reminding me, nurturing me, helping heal my sometimes overwhelming grief. Come to think of it, I’m never bored. My mother’s advice sank deep: “Just get out the cardboard and draw.” My reflections aren’t on cardboard now, but every fresh page offers the same gift, a chance to reconnect with the most precious part of myself, my soul.
It’s thrilling beyond measure to watch someone remember in a flash, then embrace that little being inside them they’d forgotten. And the more they learn about that precious soul, the more they discover that they still own the qualities they had before life got really tough.
When Frank discovered his soul child, he wept. We were in a gathering where participants were given this task: “Take a journey back to your early years and remember the sights, smells, sounds, feelings, and even tastes of that place. Now look at your soul child in the yard you’re recalling right now.”
Frank’s eyes filled with tears, then he wept silently as a flood of emotion washed over him. Later, I asked him to tell me how he’d experienced the journey home. He said, unflinchingly, “I’ve given myself a hard time for decades. I have a responsible position and must make hard decisions every day. I’ve become thick-skinned. My children say they’re waiting for me to mellow—one of them says ‘thaw.’ I’ve begun to believe them, that I’m a crusty old goat who doesn’t care about other people’s feelings. But today I saw, in real time, that I wasn’t born that way. In fact, I’m very tenderhearted at my core. Today I found myself… and I miss him so very much.”
This is time well spent.
Spiritual practice: Recall the times that are your closest moments— these times well-spent that open you to the Divine and your internal creativity.
Self-inquiry: What would prevent you from “going home?”
Prayer:
Dear God, I am so thankful for Frank’s journey back home and the treasures he discovered. I wonder what he is like when he thaws. Amen
