Across the road from my old high school, on a hill is a water tower. Each year the seniors will sneak up to it one night and write in giant numbers the year of their graduation. This year as I was driving back from the post office I looked up at the water tower and was shocked. There was a giant number 24 on it. That couldn’t be right. When I graduated there was a giant number 84 on it. It couldn’t be 40 years since I graduated high school. Surely I wasn’t that old. On the inside I sometimes still felt like an 18 year old. Where had all the years gone?

It seemed like I blinked and 40 years had flown by. As I drove home I thought about all of those years. Waves of memories washed over me. There was the fun and hard work that had been my college years. There was the early years of struggle as a young husband and father just trying to make enough money to make ends meet. There was the tears and pain when my wife and I learned first one and then both of our sons were handicapped with Autism. There was the years raising my children and learning so much about love, laughter, and life from them. There was the delight and pride in seeing my daughter graduate from the same high school and college that I did. It was such a glorious tapestry of memories full of love, fear, joy, pain, struggles and triumphs. And as I pulled into my driveway I thanked God for them all.

I doubt I will get another 40 years of memories here. But I am determined to make the ones I do get as beautiful, loving, and joyous as possible. I want to share all the love I can, create all the joy I can, help all the people I can, and make the world a better place every chance I can. I want to laugh, sing, dance, think, feel, write, share, and live in such a way that it makes Our Heavenly Father smile. Because I know in the end those numbers on the water tower don’t really matter. Life does not end here. It goes on forever. And the best part is yet to come.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons