However, when we began our journey of infertility, all of a sudden I felt a lot of guilt over the time and money spent on scrapbooking. It seems silly, but I struggled with 'what's the point?' WHO is this for? When I'm dead and gone, WHO will care? I appreciate all the work my Papaw and Mom put into documenting our family history, but will anyone really care about MY part of the story? My little family?...Uncle Chris and Aunt Audra and their crazy animals? Surely everyone will have their own stories and memories to preserve...what difference does it make if I create a 'story of us' for posterity or if these pictures sit in a box, or on the computer, or if they never get taken at all?
So, I stopped. I continued to take pictures and put them in a book...but not necessarily 'scrapbooking' them...If you're a scrapper, you understand the distinction. The entire process had lost all appeal. Every picture I glued onto card stock mocked me...another picture of your dogs? concert tickets and programs, stubs from museums and movies, pictures of nieces and nephews opening the gifts from us...WHY? Who even LOOKS at them, besides me?
I love watching home videos (many, courtesy of aforementioned 'Papaw'). At LEAST once a year, I watch those [all too few] years through his eyes. Hear the sweet voices, laugh at the same jokes we still use in the family vernacular today, see Mom as a young mother once again, trying to mold us into decent human adults :) Why does even TYPING about these videos now tug at my heart and bring tears to my eyes?
Because it's not about me, it's about US, it's about ALL the pieces of our family story. Where we came from, how we got here, why we are the way we are, why we think the way we think...looking back, you can SEE God's hand prints all over EVERYTHING! The ugly beauty of hospitals, the precious mess in a house full of children, the aching heart for faces no longer seen. It all fits because it's all a part.
So, our part of the story deserves to be told. Not because of who we are, what we do, or how we think, but because we are a part of His story and His is a story Definitely worth telling. Over and over again, every single part. Because it's His love, His creation, and His sacrifice.
How many times can you count in the Bible of the Israelites telling their story? I've never counted, but it's a LOT. EVERY time they get the chance, they start back at the beginning and work their way through the hundreds of years...the good, the bad, the obvious, the obscure...it all takes its place in the tapestry. They include it all, not because it's flattering to them or particularly exciting...the listing of kings and judges and LONG genealogies (I mean, come on, does anyone LIKE reading those?)...but because it's PART of the story. Who's to say what is noteworthy or important? Is it not all important? Is it not all grace?
This is our part..Only one thread of the tapestry, but valid and worthy of being seen and remembered, if only by me. It's a small gift of remembrance. A small sacrifice of my time. But I'll give it with thanks because it's what I have to give. It's God who will take my gift and do amazing things with it. Again, not because of what I offer, but because of what HE can do.
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