I’m always amazed how fast the sink fills up after I do the dishes. Or how the hamper fills up so soon after I finish the laundry. And how the floor becomes a land mine of toys minutes after I put them away. Sometimes it seems like everything I do gets undone just as quickly.

There’s something inside me that longs for permanence in what I do. I want the things I invest my time and resources in to last—and not just for a day or two, or even a year. I want them to last beyond me.

Maybe that’s why I like writing so much. As long as the computer doesn’t crash, it’s nice to know my words will still be there even when everything else I spent the day working on is unraveling around me. There’s a satisfaction in completing something and having it stay…complete.

It’s easy to forget that the little things I do for my family are more permanent than my written words will ever be. Dinner may be quickly devoured and the dishes as quickly dirtied, and the clothes I just washed will likely end up in the hamper within hours. But action by action, day by day I’m investing in the lives of those I love and enabling them to one day be all they were created to be.

Someday the book I’m working on will be published. I’m hoping it will last beyond this generation. But I know my children will last, and what I impart in them now through servanthood and quality time and sacrificial love will be passed down generation to generation. I’m writing on their lives things they will take with them and pass down. Every act of love, no matter how small, no matter how seemingly temporary, and no matter how forgotten, will outlast us if only in unseen ways. And that makes everything worth it.

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” (I Corinthians 13:13)