Polishing Memories

Since Katrina, I've looked at my own home differently, as something mine, yet not mine. As something temporary and vulnerable... as something I will not always have.

Yet, in one way, I will always have it, namely, in my memories. Oh my... once I tried to write down my favorite memories of our life inside this house and I finally gave up because the list had no end.

My favorite memories? The quiet times when gratitude was heavy on the air. Usually those times have happened in the evenings during the thousands of sunsets. The closing of a day has a light and a pace which belongs only to sunset. It's as though the day is closing its eyelids. It's a time of rest and reflection. Well, at our house, anyway.

One of my favorite Bible verses is the one which says, "And Mary pondered these things in her heart." I thought of that verse yesterday while I sat on our front steps in the quiet sunny afternoon and let my gaze fall on my flowers, then upon my neighbors' houses. I see pondering as being a restful thing--pondering is not reasoning and making myself crazy with figuring things out on my own.

Pondering is more like reflecting on the good in my life and knowing there will be more good. Pondering is trusting God to lead me, instead of figuring out the way according to the current circumstances or the way everyone else would do something. Pondering is is like lifting your face and basking in the remembered goodness of God and hearing answers to your questions from His heart, not your head.

Pondering is allowing myself to walk through my memories and taste them once more. And I think when the time comes to leave this house of mine either by choice or by force, I will be grateful for the gift of pondering. I'll be thankful that I can remember all the sunsets and sunny mornings, too, out upon our porch. And so much more--all the endless memories we have accumulated here in twelve years. All the memories which will go with me wherever I go and cannot be washed away by any storm. All the memories which this past week, I have taken out and polished for the day when they may be needed up the road ahead.