You have heard the comment, “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.” I had a stark reminder of this recently.  My daughter and her family moved this summer from Georgia to Utah.  They had lived in a beautiful, friendly neighborhood in Georgia for six years.  Essentially, it has been the only place their three kids have ever known as home.  Well, the other day at school, my seven-year-old grandson in Utah finished his assignment early.  The teacher told the kids they could turn their paper over and write whatever they wanted on the back.  Well, my grandson misses his best friend, Bear, in Georgia terribly, so he wrote Bear a letter telling him how much he missed him.  Those two had been nearly inseparable their entire lives.  They were together at one of their houses or playing outside nearly non-stop these past six years, so this separation has been tough on those two little guys.  My grandson recopied the letter and mailed it to Bear that evening when he got home.  The next day, Bear’s Mom called my daughter and said Bear had had a really bad day missing his friend.  It had been an especially tough time for Bear at precisely the same time my grandson was writing his letter in school.  So, they had a FaceTime call that day to reconnect.

This story of my grandson and Bear demonstrate once again the importance of living in the moment. So often, we tie ourselves up in knots worrying about tomorrow, or next week, or anything else so much that we miss the very pleasures and joys of today.  We are only promised today, so allowing ourselves to miss this moment is, in some respects, cheating us out of something that we may miss tomorrow.  How many of us will look back someday and say about today, “that was a really good day.”  Or, “I wish I could go back to the way things were then.”  Or, “I wish I had cherished that time we had just a bit more.”  Or, “I just assumed those good times would go on, but, just like that, it was over.”

Let’s not miss it today! Look around your life and cherish today those people, opportunities, and situations you find yourself in.  Though they might not be our own personal “best of times”, we may still look back someday and wish we had today just one more time.