Our pastor has a habit of making me cry on Mother’s Day. I don’t know if it’s something he plans or if it just happens. But in the course of his Mother’s Day sermon, he always shares a story, plays a song, shows a video clip, or does something else that reminds me how very fleeting the time I have with my kids truly is.

The tears well up, suddenly, and one or two fall before I can stop them.

Oh, I know, sometimes it doesn’t seem fleeting, when you’re in the midst of motherhood. Sometimes the days as a mom seem downright long. The days when we’re caring for a sick child, praying through a conflict, agonizing over a kid’s struggles. The rainy days stuck inside with a busy toddler, when the car is in the shop. The nights we sit up, waiting for a teen to get home.

But when we can shift our perspective, see the big picture…we realize that these years fly by. They’ll be gone before we know it.

This past Mother’s Day, our pastor gave an illustration that has really stuck with me.

(Perhaps because it involved large quantities of M&Ms. M&Ms have a way of staying with me.)

He set out several clear jars filled with varying amounts of M&Ms. Each M&M represented one week.

The first jar was full, and illustrated all the weeks we have in store when a child is first born. The time we can spend with this new little person stretches out before us, seemingly endless. There is boundless potential, plenty of time to do special things, opportunities to teach, to show love, to just be together.

Subsequent jars held fewer and fewer M&Ms — representing when our kids go off to kindergarten, middle school, high school… Each milestone brings a sense of joy, but also reminds us of the swift passage of time.

Our pastor ended with an empty jar, symbolizing that time when our kids leave home, going off to college or whatever comes next…when our time with them (at least the consistent, daily, we-still-live-in-the-same-house kind of time) is, for the most part, done.

I’m not yet at the empty-jar stage. I still have six years before C.(12) leaves for college. But the pastor had a jar representing where we are right now.

312.

That’s how many M&Ms were in the jar that represented our now.

312 weeks. That’s how much time you have with a child from the time they begin 7th grade until the time they begin college.

312.

I can’t get that number out of my head. It’s not a tiny number, but it’s certainly not a huge number either.

C. started 7th grade this year. To be honest, it feels a bit surreal. Wasn’t I just in 7th grade? Wasn’t I just struggling to resist peer pressure, and figuring out how to make friends in this strange new world called “adolescence”?

It’s hard to believe that I have a 7th-grader. And harder still to acknowledge that I only have 312 more weeks.

Some of those weeks will zip past in a blur. Some will languish, hanging around for a while. But one by one, they’ll pass.

I pray God would give me the wisdom and love and discipline to live them well, with my very favorite 7th-grader.