"Life is Time's galley slave"

I have always been fascinated with TIME. What is time? It blows my mind that I can not stop it. There is nothing I can do; tomorrow will come, for good and bad. I have been sick with dread for what tomorrow has in store and at those moments I would have given anything to stop time. On the other hand, I have often found peace in knowing that, no matter what, the deadline will pass, things end, time passes by.

I have to admit that if I could stop time, I would probably still be 10. I would have been sure to stop time in my fear for tomorrow or in my sorrow-the days when you just don't want to go on. Where would you be?

I have often thought that as God gives us our agency, he also gives us TIME- which requires us to keep making choices.

I made up a motto in my teenage years, "Time is not my shackle," referring to wearing a watch. It mostly represented for me that I didn't want to live by my watch- dictate my life around the time of day. However, upon further pondering, I have realized TIME is my shackle. I am in complete bondage to it. I cannot control it. "My life is like an hour glass glued to the table."

I usually feel like time goes too fast. I never have enough time to prepare.

The "winds of time" is a main theme in the book aforementioned, A Lantern in Her Hand. Here are a couple clips that I really love...

"She had a queer sensation of wind blowing past her,- of wind that she could not stop. Oh, stop Time for a few minutes until we can do something about the war... But the winds blew past, and the clock hands went around, and James and Belle's husband and several of the neighbor boys had gone to war."

"'Inasmuch as we are gathered here together in the sight of the Lord,'

Suddenly, Abbie wanted to halt the ceremony. There seemed nothing in her mind but that odd thought of a wind rushing by, a wind she could not stop,- Time, going by,- time which she could not stay. Stop Time for a minute until she could think what queer thing was happening to her.

'Do you take this woman,...sickness,...health,... 'til death,..."

What a queer thing to talk about now, -death,- when it was life that was before them.

'...this man...lawfully wedded husband..?'

'I do.'

But, oh Will...Will...who are you? Do I know you? And then quite suddenly, Abbie Mackenzie became Abbie Deal."

"It is the prerogative of the dramatist to lower the curtain upon a scene and raise it upon a later one, --of the story-teller to close one chapter and begin another when time has passed. Real life is not so. There is no kind interval of time as the settings of various experiences shift,- no heart-easing period of days between the chapters of life.

Life is Time's galley slave, forever shackled to its relentless master. If its hardest blow be dealt at three o'clock, then four o'clock must be met and five and six, - the first dark, agonizing night and the first pale torturing dawn. And so it was unreal, even cowardly, to leave Abbie Deal wrestling with her deepest emotions, -living two lives; one within herself, wracked and tortured, -the other, and outward one which met all the old duties and trivial obligations with composure,- leave her in the garden of her Gethsemane, to meet her many months later."

Time. A Precious Commodity. I wish I could always use it wisely.