18 years of moments

My daughter turned 18 today.

It seems like she went from little girl to young woman in the blink of an eye.

When she was young, I wrote this little poem after watching my wife cut her hair one day in the summer.

I saw the pieces of her hair scattered across the grass, and thought about how time was slipping through my fingers.

Then I thought about how the birds would probably use her hair to make their nests, and I thought about how these fleeting moments are not lost, but woven into the fabric of our lives.

So today I am thankful for 18 years with this wonderful young woman (and for 20 with her brother). And while a piece of me is nostalgic for those childhood days, all of me is enriched by every one of those moments.

And I'm looking forward to many more awesome moments with these two great young adults.

And I'm sure their lives will be full of awesome moments.

But that's really what it's all about--the present. The past is only important because it got us to the present, and the future's only important because it may one day be the present.

And all we really have is this present moment.