Thinking of Time

We just returned from a whirlwind holiday tour -- all six of us together -- joining with our families in icy northern Indiana and sunny middle Georgia. 

Time passed -- is there another word for its movement? -- slowly.  For that, I was thankful.

Time moves differently at my age than it did when I was my kids' ages.  I remember longing for time to accelerate:  

• "Are we almost there?"
• "When will we get there?"
• "How many more days until Christmas?"
• "I wish my birthday would hurry up!"

 But now I live with the knowledge that all I know will not always be so.  As time marches on, so does this life.  In Otherwise, the late Jane Kenyon wrote this:

"I slept in a bed

in a room with paintings

on the walls, and 

planned another day

just like this day.

But one day, I know,

it will be otherwise."

1. And yes, I too know that one day the life that I now know will be otherwise.  At least for a while.
2. And I will one day miss what I know and love.  At least for a while.
3. And I will embrace what I least want to experience.  At least for a while.

The first half of each part of that trilogy promotes a morbid fear.  (I looked in a thesaurus for synonyms of the adjective "morbid," and none of those words is comforting.  But my refrain of "at least for a while" is a comfort because the promise of Advent and Easter is that the curse is neverlasting precisely because the promise is everlasting.  

Why so downcast, o my soul?  Put your hope in God.

Our trip was a very good trip.