Precious Memories

As I prepare to leave for college, I am learning more and more acutely the importance of memories. Yesterday was the day I finally sat down to clean out my desk in which I found so many things to jog old memories. You see, when I find something that I want to keep but I don't want to see on a daily basis, I stick it in my desk. I found my first pair of glasses that I haven't worn since I was 12, all kinds of crafty materials, pictures that were taken 17 years ago, stickers from my "pioneer girl" phase when I was ten...Let's just say that I don't clean out my desk often.

But among all of these useless odds and ends, I found a stack of photos that I view as the "diamond in the rough." These photographs were mostly taken by my mother, which makes them valuable, because my mother is now unable to take pictures easily due to her MS. Then I looked at the content. One picture was of five first-grade students during a class party. I was one of those students. Two of remaining students graduated from high school with me. All I could say was, "Wow." We had all grown up together, learned from each other, experienced each other's happy and sad moments. The memories are indeed precious, as the old hymn says.

I found another picture of me and my brother sitting in a pile of leaves outside of my great-grandfather's house in Northern California. I appeared to be about four, which would have made my brother two. This photo was significant because I haven't been to that area in about ten years, but I am planning to leave tomorrow to return to that very area, where I spent so much time when I was young.

The last photo I found nearly stopped my heart. It was taken during a Christmas party when I was in third grade. I was decked out in a lovely purple cast from when I had broken my arm two months before. In the center of the picture was my third grade teacher, Mrs. Mitchell, and all of my class sat surrounding her. Mrs. Mitchell recently passed away after a long battle with cancer. We would never be together again until heaven, but this photo made me look forward to heaven more than ever, though I sorely missed the times past.

Some tell me I'm nostalgic and old-fashioned, and that is probably true. But there is something about memories that are so precious. Sometimes I will sit and replay old memories in my head. I am so grateful that God gave us the capacity to have memories. To remember the people He put in our lives. To remember the joys and even the sorrows. To remember the dramatic "firsts" and epic "lasts." Lord, thank You for memories.