Facing Forward

I've been spending a good bit of time looking back over my shoulder during the last week or so.  The first thing that happened was that the calendar turned from July to August, and I had to face the fact that my daughter's summer at home was winding down, so I was looking back to the recent past when we still had the whole summer  stretching out ahead of us.   The next thing was that I noticed that a couple of our old photo albums were falling apart.  The new albums I ordered arrived this week, so I've  been transferring the old pictures to the new albums.  Our oldest child was just six months old at the beginning of the first tattered album.  So I was looking farther back to when we still had our whole parenting adventure ahead of us.  The final thing hasn't actually happened yet, but next week my husband and I will be celebrating our thirtieth wedding anniversary, so I've been looking back to the summer of 1982 when we still had our whole marriage ahead of us.  All this looking back has made me nostalgic for those sweet beginnings.  I don't think there's anything wrong with glancing back into the past from time to time, but you've got to be careful.  If you get into a habit of constantly looking back over your shoulder, you miss all the things that are happening right in front of you--things like having grown-up kids who are now your friends, not just your children; and having a husband you know much better now than you did thirty years ago; and even saying good-bye to your sweet college-age daughter at the end of the summer because even though you're going to miss her, you're just as excited for each new chapter of her life as she is.  So in the days to come, I may peek over my shoulder occasionally, but for the most part, I'm going to do my best to face forward and keep my eyes wide open--I don't want to miss a thing!