A Monday of Memories

Today is one of those dreary kind of days. The kind that makes you just want to sit and do nothing.  As I was sitting in my chair early this morning, I was thinking about the weekend. We had a great weekend. Celebrated a birthday. Spent some quality time with my sweet husband. Made a drive up to the North Georgia mountains and reminisced a little about our college days. As we drove through our old campus, we realized that there is not much left of the old. In fact, a large part of the campus is completely new. But the dorms I lived in and the dorm he lived in are still there. We drove around and remembered old stories and old friends. That campus holds great memories.


We went to our favorite restaurant in town. It is still the same. A little bigger now, but it still looks the same. It is the restaurant we ate in for many of our dates. We ate there the night he proposed to me. We took the girls back there years later to share the stories. It holds great memories.


We drove around the town and out to a camp where we used to go to hike and fish. We spent a lot of Saturday afternoons there just walking around, watching him fish and talking for hours. I grew up going to summer camp there so I would remember all those great camp experiences while we were making new memories. He proposed to me in front of the waterfall there. Our girls have gone to summer camp there. We have taken them back there to see the waterfall and tell the story. That camp holds great memories.


We ate some fudge. We ate some boiled peanuts. We drove around all of our old hang out places. We talked and we laughed. But most of all we remembered. All those years ago, we made memories. We love to tell some of the stories to our girls. They feel like they know a little part of our lives before they came along. 


They have always loved our stories. They know the story of our first date. We told them how daddy decided we were going to walk to the restaurant because he thought it would be romantic. We told them how a torrential down pour came and their aunt had to come pick us up and take us back to campus. We have walked down that same road with them and eaten in that same restaurant. We have shown them pictures of us back then. So many years ago.


As I thought about all of these things this morning, I was reminded of something our pastor always says. He says that one of the most important things you can do for your kids is tell them your story. Not just the stories of your childhood and of your life; but of your relationship with the Lord. Tell them how you came to faith. Tell them if you struggled or what you have learned since then. Tell them about how you have grown and what God has done in your life. He will use all of your story. Even the hard parts and the parts that weren't such good memories. He works all things together for good. Tell your children that.


Our past can become part of their future. Our stories can become stories they tell their children. My prayer is that our story of our faith and of our love for Jesus is a huge part of that legacy. That their stories will be a reflection of what we have told them and taught them. Memories hold powerful stories that reach into the generations to come.

"...so the next generation would know them,

 even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children."

Psalm 78:6