Lasting Impression

Hi everyone!  I am finally back home after traveling for the entire month of June!  My travels took me through, Missouri, Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, as well as Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.  Whew!  Before I leave again in two days for The Angel Company Seminar, I wanted to add a quick post. Thank you for being so patient as my posts have been few and far between these last couple months.

I realize that I write quite a bit about traveling this road of life… the journey that we find ourselves on. I know I consistently mention that it's not so much where we find ourselves, but who we find ourselves with. Travel partners can make all the difference! These two trips that I made in June were no exception.  The road inevitably brings things our way that we couldn't have planned for and must take in stride. Road construction, mechanical difficulties, weather conditions all effect our travels through this day-to-day life we are given. I learned on both of these June trips that abundance is choosing Plan A when Plan B would be easier.

One of the joys that I had in traveling to California was being with family.  We stayed with my brother, sister-in-law and their family and I also got to see my older sister and brother-in-law, nephew and his wife and my dad. So, I have been trying to figure out why, in the midst of all we were doing, one 'picture' still stands out in my mind.

As I mentioned, we went to visit my dad, who lives in northern California and is now in an assisted living home.  My younger sister recently spent a week there cleaning and clearing out his home in order to put it on the market. Many closets are completely cleared out and the rest house the boxes that are left that are valuable to him or still need to be gone through. We were to stay there overnight while we were visiting.  It still has its furnishings and limited dishes and utensils in the kitchen. Towels are in the linen closet and bedding is on the beds.  There is one box, however, conspicuous in its place in the dining room… not tucked out of sight in a closet.  It is a box of trophies. Mostly golf trophies of my dad's. Some ice hockey trophies of my brother's. All randomly piled into a box that is the first thing you see as you come in the side door.

I have thought about that box of trophies a lot. Each one represents success and achievement. Yet they are no longer on display; no longer valued as an important part of the life he now leads. We walk around the box. I think I am the only one who shuffled through them to see which was for what and I think about my own life.  I don't have trophies, but what will it be of mine that is thrown into a box that people walk right by? My mini albums or scrapbooks? The many little projects that I've made to try to capture the goodness of this life we live and the faithfulness of God? The glimpses into stages of our girls' lives? I'm concerned about that.  Do people I love truly know what I value? Do I expect them to just know or do they know because of how I treat those things now?

If you walk into my craft room, you may just want to turn around and walk out.  It is usually a mess. Only I can really find things in there and sometimes, even I can't! If you love the same types of things, then you may want to linger longer. You'd see that the drawers are all marked and that what is inside of them matches the label. Generally speaking, however, you may not be able to discern, among all that "stuff", what is truly valuable to me.  So, I decided, the trophies will be what motivates me to clean and to clear and to display well what is truly valuable to me. I am not a great "designer" and they may not be "award winning" but the time and effort and thought alone that I put into the things that I make should make them valuable. My writings and my creative projects are what I want to have a lasting impression of who I am and how I live.  I am newly motivated to work in such a way that my home truly reflects what is valuable and beautiful to me.

What about you? Have you given a place of honor in your home to those things that are truly valuable to you? Do those around you know what is truly important to you? What about your life do you want to have as a lasting impression?

Thinking it Through With You,