Time Marches On

The doctor who delivered 4 of our 5 children would say “time marches on” immediately after the safe delivery of our babies.  By the third delivery, we knew he was going to say it and we would look at each other and smile as his words began to come out of his mouth.  At 20-some years of age, we really had no idea what he meant by that.  He, though, had delivered hundreds of babies and was a decade or so older than us and knew from experience what that meant.

Indeed, it does.

No matter what occurs in this life.

Time marches on.

Today is the last day of 2018, and it started off a difficult day.  Interestingly enough, to me anyway, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are just as taxing, emotionally speaking, as Thanksgiving and Christmas.  The first New Years’s Eve after our son left us for heaven, my daughter and I sat on our couch and love seat and cried as we watched the ball drop in New York City on TV.  I remember looking at her and asking her why she thought this day was just as hard as the previous holidays had been, and she pensively told me that it felt like we were leaving her brother behind in the year he passed away.

Time marches on.

Our son and brother died in 2014, but we are still here, on the earth, and it is about to be 2019.

No matter what happens here on the earth, time continues to march on.  We can’t stop it, though the book of Joshua gives an account of the sun standing still for 24 hours, so we can surmise that God can stop time if He so desires.

But I cannot.

I have no control over it, whatsoever.

If I did, I would return to that day in 2014, and redo the outcome.

I’m beginning to heal enough to feel a little optimistic about the future, though nothing like I used to feel.

This optimism seems more anchored in God than I’ve ever felt before.  The knowledge that earth is not my home, merely my temporary dwelling place, is more real to me than ever before in my life.

The hope we have in Christ is truly my only hope; the hope that my faith in His sacrifice will be rewarded with an eternity with Him and my loved ones that have gone before me – that is my only hope.

Time marches on………….here on earth.

But in heaven there is no time; indeed, no need of time.  God is eternal, and so will we be, as we dwell in eternity with Him.

As I sit in my office, typing away, recording my random thoughts about life, death and time, my wall clock ticks off the seconds, marching toward midnight and the beginning of a new year.  I’m not near as sad about the beginning of a new year as I’ve been for the past 4 years.  I find, this New Year’s Eve, that I actually feel a glimmer of hopefulness for the first time since that fateful day in 2014.  I feel like I can go on.  I can put my hope, faith and trust in God and His leading and not fear the future…….for myself or my family.

This feels like progress to me!

I not only feel a glimmer of hope for the future, but I feel a little less burdened by the past.

I can’t fix anything in the past, or count on anything in the future.  I can only live in, and be thankful for, this moment in time.

Thanks for, once again, reading my rambling thoughts.

Happy 2019 to you.