As a one year old, everything was an adventure.  You learned to walk, to talk, to try new foods.  It will be so exciting when you are three! As a four year old, you started to show independence. You wanted to do everything yourself without the help of mom or dad.

Life was getting interesting, but five will be ever so much more exciting! At eight you are an old pro at school.  You have started playing sports, or maybe dance or music lessons.  But if you were 10…At 12 starts middle school. A new set of challenges…homework is tougher, the opposite sex suddenly looks appealing, and your face and skin has become an adversary.

You can’t wait to get into high school. High school isn’t what you thought at all. Friends are hard to make, and it’s hard to find the right “crowd,” and the homework, ugh! Everything is harder! If only you were 16 and had your driver’s license, life would be sooo much easier!You’re about to graduate.

You’re 18 and heading to college in the fall. The pressure is on. What to major in, minor in? What will you become involved in?  Dorm life, roommates, classes, no time to think. You want to go to the bars, but at 18 you know it isn’t right. If only you were 22 and out of college.Finally, you’ve made it! You graduated college with a degree. There are no jobs available and you never met “the right one” in college. So you are educated and alone and may have to move back in with your parents. How lame is that? If only you had found the right one and married.

You get married, have two kids, have a mortgage, a car payment, and work is driving you nuts.  Now you can’t wait for retirement.65 arrives before you know it. Retirement is a bit overwhelming. Days drag on forever. All the money you saved doesn’t go as far as you hoped. Your health is pretty good, but those aches and pains keep creeping in. Your next birthday comes and you wish you were four again, with no worries. Everything was an adventure…..

“There is a time for everything, a season for every activity under heaven… God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end.” Ecclesiastes 3:1, 11 NLT.

Submitted by Pam Ninness