Print or Email

TheDisicpleMD

Recently I was going through some old photo albums.  One photo caught my then-20-year-old daughter and me dancing with her face towards the camera. Looking at her face, I could see my little girl of long ago who used to ride my back as I gave her ‘horsey’ rides. Time is a funny thing; sometimes it seems to go so slow, and at other times it seems to go so quickly. Vacations always seem to go by in a flash, while school, work and unpleasant tasks seem to drag. I am reminded of a commercial years ago that was put out by Kodak. In it, they would flash pictures of a man swinging his little girl around by her arms as they aged. In the background played a song entitled “Turn Around” with these words:

Where are you going, my little one, little one,

Where are you going, my baby, my own?

Turn around and you’re two,

Turn around and you’re four,

Turn around and you’re a young girl going out of my door.

Turn around, turn around,

Turn around and you’re a young girl going out of my door.

Where are you going, my little one, little one,

Little dirndls and petticoats, where have you gone?

Turn around and you’re tiny,

Turn around and you’re grown,

Turn around and you’re a young wife with babes of your own.

Turn around, turn around,

Turn around and you’re a young wife with babes of your own.

(Notes: by Harry Belafonte, Malvina Reynolds and Alan Greene. Published by Clara Music Publishing Corporation (ASCAP). Administered by Next Decade Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Copyright 1957)

Reflecting on the picture of my daughter and I dancing,  I am reminded that life is very short. “Turn around” and a girl becomes a young lady, “turn around” and she becomes a young mother. Depending on how you live your life, time can be an enemy or it can be your friend. Like a football game, if you are ahead when the two-minute warning is given you are happy. But time is the enemy to those who are losing the game. Such is the game of life. Let us use time wisely and make each day count in our quest to become a more Christlike person. Then, as the years advance, we can look through the albums of our life with joy as we are reminded of the type of life we have lived.

I close with the words of Thomas Monson, printed in the November 2000 issue of the Ensign.

“Time passes quickly. Many parents say that it seems like yesterday that their children were born. Now those children are grown, perhaps with children of their own. “Where did the years go?” they ask. We cannot call back time that is past, we cannot stop time that now is, and we cannot experience the future in our present state. Time is a gift, a treasure not to be put aside for the future but to be used wisely in the present.”

The clock is still ticking for us all. When we next ‘turn around,’ let us be able to smile at our memories and have no regrets! What a warm feeling it is to ‘turn around’ and see things that bring joy and happiness into our lives.