"If I could turn back time...."

    "Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't own it, but you can use it.  You can't keep it, but you can spend it.  Once you've lost it you can never get it back." 

"You can't change the past, but you can ruin the present by worrying about the future."

"Don't count every hour in the day, make every hour in the day count."

When you're young, you want to grow up.  When you grow up, you want to go back to when you were younger.  Well maybe sometimes you really don't, depending on your past years.  Sometimes the older you get, the better life becomes. There was a super long period in my life where I was stuck in time which didn't seem to move and nothing got better.  Then when I finally came out of it, I wanted to go back and start over and erase certain years.  But that was never meant to be and when I learnt to deal with the reality of it and accept it, I was able to move on.  In a really good way. I went from wishing that I never had "wasted" years to really appreciating my life and myself.  To actually wanting to look ahead to my future and a fresh new period of time.  Its all about time.  Time just cannot be rushed, no matter how hard you try.

They say time heals all wounds, and there is a lot of truth to that saying.  It's amazing how you think you will never recover from something, and then down the road you look back in wonder at how far you've come and how that thing is almost a distant memory.  Not everything that happens in life works like that though. What really helps is not the looking back in nostalgia, regret, anger, or waste, but looking back and remembering the good memories and actually looking at photos and knowing that the person you were at that time doesn't even exist anymore. That you are better and stronger and a different person in a really good way that you never thought possible. That you are a "new creation." Time brings hope and new life and new beginnings. Don't try to erase it, just try to deal with it. It's never too late for anything.

When I was 5 and my oldest brother was 20, my mom says that I used to cry "I want to be 20!!!" That is just crazy, as I'm sure when I was 20 I wanted to cry that I actually wanted to go back to being 5!!!  My amazingly mature character trait is definately not one of patience, I have to say.  Remember kindergarten when everyone was supposed to learn patience? or gardening? by dropping a seed in some dirt and putting it in a styrofoam cup and waiting for a cute little plant to grow? Well, I'm pretty sure that I took a spoon or my fingers to it to see if the seed would have grown in only 5 seconds.  That's me. Actually, that's still me. My mom tried to teach me to crochet when I was younger.  I only remember going outside and throwing my crochet hooks over the fence into the blue yonder of the neighbours yard in frustration.  Have I tried since then.  No.

Would the impatient Maria turn back time if I could?  That is a pretty tempting thought in many ways.  But every little thing and every single second of life that has happened to me has made me into who I am right now at this very second. It's not all good, but it's not all bad either. Growth is when you can finally look back and say that I can't turn back time, I can't live in regret, and I am looking to my future with actual hope and faith.  Seeing it all through the eyes of faith is the one thread that ties it all together.  Past, present, and future.  God was there, he is here, and he will be there ahead of me.  With or without me.  That gives me comfort.  That makes me think of time as my friend and not my enemy.  There are still many fears and uncertainties that I have about the future, like I'm sure everyone has that are pretty common.  Things no one can control, no matter who you are. You know what I'm talking about.

I have to remember to live in the moment.  I have to remember to cherish the time I've been given.  I have to practice better how to let go and let God sometimes, because a thousand years are like a blink of the eye in God's time.  Not my time.  And moving ahead to better things.  I think it was C.S. Lewis that wrote "there are far better things ahead then what we leave behind...."