Nostalgia...

Much has happened over the last several months. As we were finally emerging from the shadow of COVID outbreaks and lockdowns, life was continuing on...sometimes at breakneck speed. 

A few months ago my sister flew to the states to see her third son graduate from high school. There was much preparation before leaving him behind: helping him find a job, buying a car, registering for college...So. Many. Changes. Wasn't it just yesterday we were celebrating his birth?

With all these changes, my sister has spent time just looking back, reflecting on memories both good and bad; and in her times of reflection, she has penned some very poignant thoughts on nostalgia...

 Sometimes you never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.

 Nostalgia.  It gets me every time.  If I sit down at my computer and look through photos, or flip through a photo album, I get SUPER sentimental.  A huge knot forms in my throat and makes it difficult for me to swallow.  How did time fly by so fast?  Look at my babies! It seems like a different lifetime ago.  So. Many. Memories. 

Of course, the difficult memories I have tried to forget; they are thrust to the dark recesses of my mind.  You know, the kind that people tell you that one-day-you-will-look-back-and-laugh kind of memories. At the moment they were happening, they were difficult, almost insurmountable, for sure.  But, somehow, time has a way of smoothing over the scratches and scars.  I don’t know that I would call it “healing all wounds,” but time does seem to take some of the sting out of the horrible experience. 

And, then there are memories that rush back from my childhood, my wedding, and my own children.  I truly feel blessed to have such a godly, goodly heritage from which I can still draw strength and confidence. Though these memories are held in such endearing fondness, why do they seem to pull my heart strings in such a way as to make the tears well up and come gushing out unbidden?

Just yesterday I was getting married and embarking on a new life as a missionary. It was just a few years ago that I trembled as I discovered that I was pregnant with my first child.  Now another anniversary has rolled around; my first child will turn twenty-two! Oh! The moments and memories that come flooding back; the stories that I could tell. 

Dr. Seuss was right: I always knew that looking back on the tears would make me laugh, but I never knew looking back on the laughs would make me cry. We do not know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory. And then as another poet put it, that is “when our memories turn to gold!”

Simply Hugs and Tissues,