Just In Time

Time.

I think about "time" a lot lately. Come October 13th, my little granddaughter will be a full 21 months old! Her mother was just 21 months old yesterday, wasn't she? I'm pretty sure she was and now she has her own  almost 21 month old.

I can't forget my own 21 year old son. He squeezed in there somewhere. I know "how" it happened. But "when" did it happen? How did what sounds like so much time condense into so little a space? Day before yesterday wasn't I walking down the aisle almost thirty-two years ago? Didn't I make my initial appearance into the world the day before that fifty-two years ago?

When did the kids I babysat for find the time to grow up and have grown kids of their own? Shouldn't I still be reminding them to brush their tongues when they brush their teeth? They had never heard of that and thought I was crazy. Not crazy; a dentist's daughter. Did they find the time to tell their kids and be crazy?

When did I become that "age is just a number" person? It snuck up on me yesterday when my thirty year old daughter was 21 months old. How did my body get older and keep rhythm with the calendar and my brain didn't? And why, when I look in the mirror, do I not see that 52 year old body that my aches and pains tell me really is 52, but the mirror tells me I'm yesterday's age? I'm twenty.

Why do I get really rankled when people wish time away? Even a second or a day. I can read it in a Facebook friend's status, and they're actually a person I really don't know, but I want to scream through cyberspace at them when they wish it was lunchtime, or the weekend. I get irritated with people face-to-face when they do the same thing.

Why do we wish time away? When we do, we're wishing our lives away. Don't we get that?

And I know why I do it. I know why I get teary when people don't understand how quickly it all passes and how quickly it will, one day, be gone, and how precious it is right now.

I shouldn't be here and if it weren't for modern technology and medicine and God's hand moving my calendar along and taking control of my short span on earth like He did, I wouldn't have been here to even know I had a granddaughter. She would know me only through memories and pictures my family would share. Those of us with melanoma in our lives know what I'm talking about.

There is a time on earth for everything. A season all its own. A time to live, a time to die. A time to savor and hold on to for the time will surely come when we have to let time go. Why wish it to go sooner than it will?

Now is the time for me to look in the mirror, dimly (as that's the way I really look best in a mirror or anywhere), and see Me. Someone who is 52 calendar years with older knees and younger brain-power. Someone who lives by the clock yet can't tell time.

Someone who understands the power of time and knows the Power of time. God bless our time

And make us truly grateful.