Do you ever think of how fast time actually passes? The first time I really noticed how fast time moved was two months ago when my daughter was in the hospital with pneumonia and Kawasaki disease. We came in through the ER and after her bloodwork and x-rays came back inconclusive, we were admitted overnight to give the doctors more time to figure out why our little girl was so sick.

Once up in our room on the pediatric floor, I distinctly remember the first thing I saw at the top of the wall opposite her bed. It was a gigantic digital clock, the red numbers pulsing out the seconds, minutes, and hours of the night. The nurses got us settled in, giving baby girl a dose of Motrin for her fever which had her asleep within minutes. I pulled the side rails of the bed up to make bumpers and propped up the bed with the remote so that she wouldn't be tempted to roll over and tangle up her IV line. I took the set of sheets and blanket from the nurses and made up the pull-out cot a few feet away from my daughter's hospital bed.

No matter what I was doing while we were in that room, be it night or day, my gaze kept shifting back to the clock.

The seconds were slipping away.

There goes one. Wait. Five more, poof! An entire minute, gone in an instant.

There were times in that hospital room (we were there for eight days, remember) when all I could do was think about how fast life goes by.

It got me thinking about how sometimes I wish with all my heart that I could freeze time.

Like the moment I kissed my husband right after the priest declared us husband and wife. The moment we walked into our first home together. The moment the second line showed up on the pregnancy test.

Or the moment I set eyes on my firstborn. And my second child. Those moments dashed through my life.

Some of the most incredible moments of my life happened in a second of time. A second and they were gone. I don't get to do them over. I will never get those moments back. They are gone from the present, yet frozen permanently in my memory, forever engrained on my heart.

As much as I grew to despise that clock on the wall in my daughter's hospital room, I was grateful to have experienced staring time in the face, 24/7. It gave me a new perspective on the seconds, minutes and hours that make up the days of our lives. It was during that hospital stay that I realized how short life really is and how important it is to make every. single. second. count.

Because they just keep on ticking by.