Time In A Bottle

As Rocky and I celebrate our 29th wedding anniversary, we just today put our oldest son on an airplane headed to Ft. Bragg N.C. for his first official assignment in the United States Army, our second son moved into his newly purchased home, and we took our daughter to college for her sophomore year. Wow - where did the years go? It is times like this that I wish for "Time In A Bottle". I would use it to drive the boys to one more soccer practice or one more ballet lesson for Sarah Rose. Maybe even one more homework session around the kitchen table as I called out spelling words and checked over the math problems. I would love to make the tears of one more booboo fade away with a kiss and a hug and be awakened in the middle of the night to a tap on the arm with someone asking to sleep with us because they were scared.
I know, even as tears roll down my cheeks, that this was suppose to happen. We have diligently trained our children to be productive, happy, self-reliant adults who search for God's will in their lives and follow it closely. We prayed that this day would come. Why does the time slip past so quickly and without warning your last moment of childhood treasures are gone never to return except in a faded memory? Someone should have warned us........ Well, maybe they did and we just didn't listen closely enough.