time with change and acceptance

Time flys by so fast...my baby turned 13 last month and my little boy will turn 18 next month.  I know everyone talks about how quickly time flys....and it just never seems to stop amazing me how much that is true.

We look at our lives, and we think....5 years - such a long time....but when we look back on the past 5 years - - it seems like yesterday.

Change...a word that may as well be the seal on pandora's box.  You never know exactly the what it will entail, and more often than  not....the ripple effect change has may go out months, years, decades.  Sometimes these ripples are amazing, sometimes not.

Whenever I am faced with change, I always go back to a quote that is never far from my mind.

“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.” ~ Anatole France

How true that is.....even what we long for the most can have its melancholy.  And, I would not want it any other way - it means we gave something of ourselves, that we invested our heart as well as our time into something...someone.

So, now, when I am faced with a change, a coming of age, a milestone, a loss.....I look at it through different eyes....I allow the sadness, the grief, as well as welcome the joy and the excitement.  For to shun one emotion is to miss out on the greater picture.

I have quit looking at the portrait of life two inches away, and began to continually take a step back - as I can - to take in the larger picture.... and one day.....I will see the entire masterpiece and will be left in awe!