Nothing reminds me of the passing of time like my kids’ birthdays. Each time they get another year older, I marvel at how quickly the time has passed. This week, my younger daughter turns nine. It is her last year in single digits. I can’t believe how old she’s getting. Wasn’t she just a baby? I remember her birth like it was yesterday. But it wasn’t yesterday.

Time just keeps marching. In the good times and the bad times, time never speeds up or slows done. It is the constant rhythm that keeps beating. When times are good, I wish I could stop time, or at least find a pause button to revel in the sunshine. Many years ago, when my husband and I first started dating, we sat on a park bench, in the middle of winter, and wished we could stop time in that moment. We were happy – totally enthralled that we had met and completely enamored in each others’ company.

A couple years later we were married and soon we started welcoming our children into the family. We reminisced about the moment on the bench and all we would have never experienced if we really could have stopped time. There were joys we would never have known. Of course, there were hardships too.

In the hard times, we usually want to speed time up. We wish we had a way to fast forward through the pain to find healing, resolution, answers, and sunshine. We want to know if the heroine lives, if the antagonist gets his due, and whether they live happily ever after. But time just keeps marching. We have to walk through the bad at the same pace we savor the good. What seems like a forever in the moment is really here and then gone.

I’ve experienced both. There have been excruciating trials that felt like they would never end. And there have been beautiful moments of pure joy. I am thankful in both cases that time kept moving even when I couldn’t or didn’t want to. It is the passing of time that has taken me through such a range of rich experiences in my life. It has taught me that nothing lasts forever, so I must savor the moment. I must drink it in and enjoy it.

As my baby girl counts the hours to her birthday, I must smile as I remember so many precious moments with her and so many moments yet to come. Although I don’t want her to grow up too quickly, I know that stopping time now would cause me to miss out on the blessings to come. And I want those blessings.