Does anyone else feel like time is flying by even more quickly than it has before? I feel like just yesterday, it was April, but now we are so close to the middle of June.

When I look at my calendar every morning to see what’s on the agenda, I am always astounded by how quickly everything is going.

“How can it be that we’re in June?” I say to myself, making a mental list of all the things I have to get done before summer actually arrives. I have to get activities planned and the yard cleaned up. I have to make sure we do X, Y and Z before the end of the summer. I have to make sure the deck is cleaned off and we actually use our fire pit this year.

I have a laundry list of things that need doing, but I don’t seem to have the time to actually get them done. As the days, hours and minutes tick by, I realize that time stands still for no one.

Well, except for God. God is the only one who exists outside the bounds of time — he, unlike us, is not impacted by that ticking clock and the days on the calendar.

God is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end — he is ever present, and does not feel hurried or rushed by the passage of days. He is unbound by the things of this world, even when we feel our obligations piling up.

He understands that we feel that rush of the clock. Maybe that’s why so often we’re told in Scripture not to worry. I don’t have the exact figure of how many times different iterations of “fear not” or “don’t worry” are written in the passages, but I know it’s a lot. We often feel like we’re scrambling to get things done “on time,” and worrying about tomorrow, but Jesus told us not to fret so much. “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble,” he says in Matthew 6:34.

This is the idea I want to make central to my life, especially this summer. We don’t get a whole lot of summery weather, as well you all know — and I think it is important that we experience each day on its own. I’ve been trying to do this, even breaking up the day into moments that I enjoy, bit by bit.

The other night, my eldest kiddo came to me after the baby had fallen asleep and asked if we could play cards. Now, it was her bedtime, so we normally don’t do this — but I thought, “How often do I say yes? How often do I cherish this time alone with my oldest daughter?” So, we pulled out our favorite card game, put on some Beatles music and lit some candles for a nighttime game. (Don’t worry — it was the weekend, so she didn’t have school the next day.) It was a whole lot of fun, and all I had to do was say “Yes!”

Too often, we are rigid in our way of living and living too much into the next day that we forget to live today. Sometimes, it is OK to say yes to an unconventional card game or let the kids have that ice cream. Sometimes, it’s OK to be spontaneous and go to the beach when you should be catching up on laundry.

We don’t have to fly by the seat of our pants all the time, but we shouldn’t be so tightly wound that we can’t enjoy our lives.

As it says in Ecclesiastes 3, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” Friends, maybe this is our season to take our lives day by day, enjoying the moments God gives us and letting tomorrow’s trouble be just that — a problem for that day.

Embrace your life today and don’t worry about the future — God knows what is happening then, too.