Last night after Beckett’s bath, I caught sight of the wall behind me in the mirror—a scatter of foam letters clinging in every direction, left exactly the way he placed them.

I almost picked them up. That’s what I usually do—tidy things, put them back where they belong. But something about this scene made me stop.

The bright reds and yellows. The upside-down twos. The jumbled alphabet, full of joy and nonsense all at once.

So instead of cleaning, I took a picture. And I left it.

Because one day, I’ll put these letters away for good.

One day, the tub will stay clean.

The walls will stay bare.

The toys will stop showing up in places that don’t make sense.

And while I love order, I know I’ll long for this more.

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“Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”

Psalm 90:12

It isn’t about counting time as much as noticing it—treasuring the little, ordinary moments that are easy to overlook. The jumbled letters on the wall. The bedtime routines. The small traces of a little boy who won’t always be little.

These moments are fleeting, but they are holy in their own way. They remind me to hold onto the beauty of right now—not just the milestones or the tidy, picture-perfect versions, but the messy, imperfect, ordinary ones too.

So last night, the letters stayed.

The mess stayed.

The reminder stayed.

For now, we leave it.