Where has this month gone? Heck, where has this year gone? It seems just days ago I was fretting and stewing about the upcoming Vegas convention --and that was three weeks ago already! It took months to get here and then it was gone, like a flash of lightning.

I think I know why years seem to go by faster as we age. When we’re five, a year is one fifth of our life. When we’re fifty, it’s only one fiftieth of our life. Summers used to seem endless – now they seem fleeting – as do spring, fall and winter. It’s as if the globe suddenly decided to turn at a rapidly increasing speed, to a point where I sometimes feel dizzy if I think about it for very long…

Kids have no concept of how short our lifetimes really are. They think forty is old. I didn’t even hit my stride until I was forty. (Okay, maybe I’m a late bloomer.) Even twenty year olds -– unless they’ve experienced some sort of tragedy and lost a family member or another loved one – feel they have all the time in the world…

Young kids even want to get older faster than they already do! They want that driver’s permit and then that first car, that first date, that first drink, that first whatever it is… there’s always a first something or other for a curious, full-tilt youth.

We get to thirty without noticing much change in our stamina, our curiosity, our ascent toward our goals… and we’re so busy that we don’t seem to realize even a change of seasons until a holiday comes around and we start shopping for that…

Not long into our forties, we start noticing slight, incremental changes, but hardly anything to ponder in a major way. By fifty getting out of bed in the morning is a little less appealing than it was; our get-up-and-go is less instantaneous; we have to think about engaging our get-up-and-go, where before it just sorta happened: our eyes opened in the morning and getting out of bed was the thing to do! In our fifties we remain a little longer, perhaps to pray or to ponder… whatever happened to the spunk that in days of yore would propel us out of bed like a rocket launcher?

Oh, we still don’t feel OLD, or even much older… we just feel… somehow less "with the program." Our brains don’t memorize the way they did as kids… stuff like that. We lose words in the middle of a sentence or walk into a room and then wonder what we headed there to do, or to get… We laugh it off for the most part. The grey hair is less laughable, but if we have great grey hair, we put a rinse in it that rivals, in double-takes and spoken compliments, anything we sported earlier in life. My Mom had a head of gray hair people would have spent hundreds of dollars for. My hair needs color these days, because I don’t have what she did in that department. She had mounds of hair. I have very thin hair – nothing to write home about.

I can’t speak beyond the mid-50’s because I’m not in the upper 50’s yet, but I anticipate, based on older people I see around me, that at some point should I live much longer, I will graduate to a shorter stride, to a cane, to a walker, perhaps at times to a wheelchair… but I know, based on others, that I will still be me, unless I should develop Alzheimer Disease and forget everything that makes me who I am: all the people who had a hand in shaping me… I doubt this will happen, because the old ladies in my family remained sharp as a tack until the last few days of their lives… We have the blessing of robust minds.

Time goes so fast from week to week it takes my breath away. It seems I sit down for work Monday morning and before I get up at day’s end it’s Friday. That’s because I love my job, but it’s also because time flies… and many, many moments get by us while we are "otherwise occupied."

There’s a Christian song currently playing that says, "Now is the only time we can do anything about.." and that both refreshes and compels me. "How am I spending each moment?" I hope someone will someday be able to say, "She lived every day blessing others. She didn’t let anyone leave her presence feeling unloved or under-appreciated. " I’m sure I still do fail in these areas, from time to time… but I hope they are less-frequent as each "now" go whizzing by.
Seize the moments you have – fleeting as they are -- and use them wisely to bless, to encourage, to foster, to show that you are here with an agenda to make someone else’s life a little sweeter, their burdens a little lighter, their hearts a little less heavy…
Love is the only thing that lasts. Whatever you give that isn’t love will vanish. That’s good news and bad news… but how much love will remain after everything else you were and did has vanished?

Others are slugging the world we inhabit. We should hug it. Hug even the sluggers. They just want us to know that they exist and that we should care that they do. No one wants to be invisible. Find out about them and see what you can do to disarm them and rock their world with unmerited favor and a listening ear…

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Aunt Tod is still in the hospital while her energy reserves are being built up. She looks better. Bobbie and I will go visit her again tonight to spend some time with her. Please continue to lift her up in your prayers.

Tonight’s the last "quality time" evening Bobbie and I will have because tomorrow evening I drive her to the airport for her flight home. We’re going to enjoy a pizza at the best pizza place in town (in many towns – Casa Mia is a national award winner) after we visit Aunt Tod (or before) and then we’ll be up till the wee hours probably squeezing the last few drops from what has been a delicious, delicious time! WAAAHHH!!

But we have the memories! Those can carry us to the next time we can do this again!!!