The March of Time

I had a conversation with someone this weekend, and they mentioned the high school football game the night before.   There was a football game, I said?   And right then in that moment I realized how fast time goes.  And it startled me.  I thought of the four years that my son played on the high school varsity football team, and how much we looked foward to Friday nights!   We loved going to those games, and watched a few of them in the rain, and didn't care!   That led me to other thoughts about my children and family.   The two years that my oldest son spent in Bulgaria serving a mission for our church.   We loved Tuesdays because that was when we would hear from him!  He was 19 years old and in a strange country 7,000 miles away.  But I never worried about him . . . not once . . . I knew he was where he was supposed to be.    I thought about my daughter, and her volleyball and basketball games and her bum knee!   And how much fun we would have just laying on my bed talking.   I remembered how worried I was when my children started middle school!   That's when it seems I had to let go . . . just a little . . . and let them be who they were.  

And then I thought back a little further . . . to the precious times we spent together as a family when the children were in elementary school and younger.   All the places we went, and the things we got to see together.   Having fun as a family.   I thought about all the movies we had watched together, all the times they wrestled with their dad, all the times we laughed hysterically together.   Their first days of school, and all the holidays we have celebrated together.  The baby blessings, the baptisms . . . and I thought about when each one of them was born.   It was just yesterday, wasn't it?   The amazingly awesome feeling holding them for the first time.  I never knew I had so much love  to give.   Smelling them, feeling their perfectly soft skin . . . there is nothing so wonderful as babies.   

And now my children are in college and getting married and working.   And it makes me kind of sad not to have them in the house.   But it also makes me so happy and very proud of the people they have grown into - - kind, compassionate, funny, hard working, trying to do the right thing in the face of adversity . . . and on and on.   Time does go by so quickly, but thank goodness I can look back in time and feel joy and happiness . . . and I can look forward to the joy and happiness to come as we all march forward in this thing we call life!

And I won't waste one more second hating myself for not being thin!  It's just not worth the time.