Time Marches On

The last few weeks have been crammed with anniversaries:

• This is my 52nd entry in this blog. That means a whole year has gone by. I'm not sure how that happened - I still feel like a total newcomer to this endeavor. I feel like I should have something profound to say about it but no exquisitely meaningful phrases come to mind. 
• Monday was my birthday - another indicator of the passage of time. I can now order off the senior menu at IHOP and take advantage of those smaller portion sizes. I guess that’s a good excuse to keep marking the passage of time. 
• Over the weekend I participated in a women's retreat and spent a good part of Saturday evening with a guitar in my hands (something I had not done in a long time) playing and singing songs from my formative years. Lots of John Denver and the Beatles and Bob Dylan. It was a shock to realize that the copyrights to most of these songs are over 40 years old; and equally shocking that I have played the guitar badly for over 40 years. How good would I be today if I had practiced every day of those 40 years? 
• Ten years ago this week I quit smoking. And I haven't cheated even once, but I can still remember the last one clearly. 
• Twenty-one Februarys ago I had the chicken pox on Valentine's Day. I really thought I might die.

What all of these things have in common is that they feel like they happened last week. Time rushes by me like a stream running downhill, and I have absolutely no power to stop it. It runs through my fingers like water, no matter how carefully I cup my hands.

A friend of mine is fond of saying "you can give someone their money back but you can't ever give their time back." I can't give you back the time you've spent reading my blog, but I hope I have used that time to help you remember that these days with your children are short. Think about it. The days from birth to age 18 number less than 7,000. Subtract time spent sleeping and you are left with fewer than 5,000. Take away the school days and you have them for about 3,500 - only half of the time they've been alive. And that is the most time you'll get with nearly any of your children. Once they leave home you'll get very few of the 365 days in each year. Waste no time dreading the future; treasure the minutes, the hours, the days you have with them now and be fully present with them whenever possible. You can enjoy the memories later.

Time marches on. Only God who was and is and is to come has unlimited days. Each one you get is precious; savor it!