Memories

The other night my son pulled up my blog and we sat and had a walk thru memory lane. I started this blog in 2008. In the nine years since I've had three more babies, we've had three children move out, two get married, four grandbabies were added, we endured years of chronic illness and the stress that comes with that, we will soon have our fifth high school graduate, we started a home based business, and we relocated our entire family to a new state. Those are the most memorable and biggest of our memories over the last nine years but there has been so many smaller and equally special memories to fill in the space between.
I am so grateful for memories. The good and the bad. The ones that bring laughter and even more so the ones that still cause the tears to flow. No matter how much suffering you went through, you never want to let go of those memories. The hard times refine you and mold you into who you are even more so than the good times.
As our children grow and one by one leave the nest I find that I am on a mission...a mission to create more memories. To create memories that our children can carry with them as they start their own families, memories that I can think back to when the day comes that the noise and laughter of our busy home quiets down, and memories that can be shared and passed down with the generations to come. I want to create a legacy with our memories.
With 2018 just around the corner I am thinking about the bucket list I want to make for our new year and the memories that are just waiting to be created. I will continue to snap pictures of every smile and laugh and I will look for the moments that need blown on to create the spark that will turn into a fire of memories. We will gather together on Sunday evenings for our family dinners and laugh together, I will document life and I will purpose to create moments that will birth into legacy memories. I will hold the moments, and pursue the little things because these are the things that the greatest memories come from.

“Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.” 
 -- L.M. Montgomery

Living in the moment

It’s the battle plan of the enemy of the soul — to keep us blind to this current moment, the one we can’t control, to keep us blind to Him, the One who controls everything.
Ann Voskamp

It’s so easy to live our lives in the past, dwelling on regrets and failures, or to live in fear of what the future holds, trying to plan and control it. What can be hard, or at least for me it is, is to live in the now, this present moment. To truly be here, right now, in this moment, fully aware and apart of it.

This moment is fleeting and only lasts but a minute. Life changes and moves at lightening speeds. There is the tyranny of the urgent, things calling…yelling, for our time and attention. We have full plates that wobble and tip and threaten to spill. What gets pushed off? Time playing with our children? Time just sitting, holding hands with our spouses? Time with our Lord?

I battle this daily and have to be honest and say I have not won the battle…yet. I will persevere and press on. I will ask myself what is more important, what truly matters in the moment. By doing only those things that truly matter I will then not have all the regrets lingering in the past. To live each moment as if it were the last. To practice His presence moment by moment. To live in this moment, here and fully apart of it, soaking in each minute…I can choose to not let this moment rush by. If I watch the moments then the hours and days will watch themselves!

You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.
Psalm 139:16