I am unabashedly and unashamedly a scrapbooker. I chronicle our family’s ups and downs and turnarounds with pictures, mementos, and journaling. Why do I do this? Primarily I scrapbook because of the pure fun of losing track of time in a creative process and for the joy of looking back in retrospection.
Retrospection is good for grasping glimpses of understanding in our life’s journey. We can connect these glimpses like a dot to dot drawing and watch patterns emerge, patterns with serve to acquaint us with ourselves, teach us humble dependence on God, and nudge us into grateful living practices.
Scrapbooking reminds me to to stage life, confusing appearances with reality, but to actually live life being consciously aware of God’s permeating persistent love.
Looking back at these artfully chronicled vignettes, I am coached into remembering that God works in my life everyday.
Looking back, grounds me in a treasure box of family memories, the mortar between the bricks of a legacy that builds my faith.
Looking back, fills me with gratitude. Gratitude cures the bad memories and highlights the good ones. Gratitude quickens my heart to prompt me in continued daily obedience, humbling acknowledging God’s past wonders.
Do I use memories to prompt humble gratitude in my daily walk?
Remember the whole way by which he has brought you these forty years through the desert so that he might be humbling you, test you to see if you have it within you to keep his commandments or not.