Twenty years is a long time. It's long enough for the children to grow up, get married and move far away from home. It's enough time for the albums of pictures to be falling apart from all the handling. It's long enough to forget which year is was that we took that trip to Idaho. Here's a picture of Aunt Lydia arranging her husband and six children for a family picture...
I have tackled the huge project of taking 27+ years of pictures and ushering them into order by scrapbooking them. I don't follow many of the raging trends of the day, but this scrapbooking thing has me completely captivated. Elv bought the new Make The Cut computer program to help me along with this newest pursuit.
So for a few hours every week I sit at the scrapbooking table and create "spreads" of our memories. It's been hugely satisfying remembering and making all this pictures into little glimpses of our past trials and triumphs. I am not bragging at all when I say that when these pictures are all into books; we will have a treasure!
In the light of eternity what is a collection of carefully archived memories? I have been thinking about that a lot lately. Scrapbooking does cost a few dollars as you go along. Is this a worthy investment? What are memories for? France asks, "Mom, what will we do with the albums when you're gone...how will we share them...they all go together."
May these albums be a celebration of family values. I hope and pray that the grandchildren will be challenged and encouraged to create worthwhile memories for their children. I hope that even the pages that tell stories of hard times and mistakes will be a means of encouraging them to press on in the things that matter.
I always wonder too if it's a worthy investment. But when I watch the kids sit down and look at an album, or when Matt and I look at the ones from back even just 6 years, it all makes sense to me that it is VERY worth it. Matt even enjoys remembering and looking back...he says it's worth the dollars. I think about how Eva had so many precious things like that done up and ready for when she left us. I hope to leave the boys their stories from my perspective before I leave this world. Didn't mean to be morbid....
ReplyDeleteIt's been especially fun for me to see Clark's childhood. No, I don't think it's a waste. I wonder sometimes if I should do more journaling when I scrapbook, will I remember in 10-20 years who was who?
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