WHAT A BEAUTIFUL DAY!

Each days Upper Room devotional reading has a Thought For The Day at the end of it.  I think today's thought is very pointed to me.  It is:

Make a list of the signs of hope around you.

Actually this is probably one of the most important things was all could do each day.  Today I will make this list because even before I read it I was for the first time in a long time aware of the beauty of the day today and the hope I have for a future.  Funny that I should have been feeling that way on the day that some are saying will be the beginning of the end of the world.  

So here is my list of signs of hope as of this morning:

1. The birds are singing a beautiful song outside my family room window.
2. There is a wonderfully cool and fresh breeze coming in my family room window.
3. After a dreary gray week of rain the sky is a beautiful blue.
4. My lawn has just be cut an even with the profusion of clover and weeds is a gorgeous fresh green.
5. I actually have a day off from work that has no plans for it at all.
6. My mom is home and well.
7. In my sorting and cleaning I found a friendship ring given by my grandfather to my grandmother and am now wearing it. It's made of copper I think and though there are those that say that copper does not help joint pain this ring is helping the joints on the hand I am wearing it.
8. I actually am looking forward to a day devoted to housework.
9. Next weekend is the wedding of my nephew and I look forward to celebrating love.
10. I have a good Shepherd who is walking with me through this life and all it brings my way and he will see me through the "valley of the shadow".  I am currently re-reading A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23 and this was the focus of  today's chapter.

So I will go on into today with these thoughts and I will look for other signs of hope in my day. Why not look for them in yours as well.  

MORE TRIVIA FROM MEMORIES FOUND

Tonight I continue to go through boxes of memorabilia these boxes go back into the mid and late 60's:

• My Senior pictures in 1968 cost $31.00
• Senior class fees amounted to $15.75
• Round trip air fare to London in 1967 cost $353 on BOAC (anyone remeber that airline???
• A passport in 1967 cost $2.50
• I was not a stellar jr high student....except in Chorus
• Lowest report card grades through out HS were math and science yet on college entrance exams highset scores were math and science????
• Matches from 1969 restaurant visits still light
• A custom made prom dress cost $50 in 1968 
• A 1966 pay stub found from job at local pubic library.  $11.40 for two weeks work.

Next up going through memory box from college years........

ALWAYS A SCRAPBOOKER!

Scrapbooks are full of memories and also interesting information.  In sorting through the contents of boxes I have found scrapbooks I made 40 years ago and more. To think that young women today think they have stumbled across some new activity.  From what I can tell its just a much more costly activity today!  No stickers or designer paper in my old scrapbooks.  Simply hand drawn pictures and hand written notes.  There is lots of cards and memorabilia in them and very few if any photos. 

It is very interesting seeing how people signed their cards.  Also it is interesting to look back and see who the cards are from.  Lots of people who were friends, but whom have faded out of my life over the years.  There are some sad or bittersweet memories found inside really old scrapbooks.  Lots of wedding invitations from the early 70's and to the best of my knowledge only one marriage is still intact.  Not a good commentary on the children of the 50's and 60's.  Or at least not a good commentary on the people I befriended. Fortunately I can say that to the best of my knowledge only a very few friends represented in these scrapbooks has died. 

Now for a bit more trivia fund in looking through these scrapbooks:  Hotel rooms in NYC could be found for $30 a night and in Watkins Glen for $16 a night; Broadway tickets could be had for $6.50; Guided tours of the UN cost 50 cents.  All this in fall of 1971.  Disney World in 1972 cost $5.95 for an 11 attraction ticket book and one day in the Magic Kingdom (of course all there was there was the Magic Kingdom); parking there cost 50 cents a day; You could visit and take a bus tour of  the Kennedy Space Center for $2.50.   Also in 1972 Cypress Gardens was still in operation.

I still have more scrapbooks to go through.  They can't be kept and I guess why should they.  They represent ancient history at this point and there will be no room for them in my future.  If there were photos I might think other wise, but you know its interesting how Hallmark cards have not changed over the decades other than the price that is....in 1972 a special card cost 50 cents! 

CONFIRMATION

From today's devotion and bible reading:

Hope deferred makes the heart sick:

a wish come true is a staff of life.

~~Proverbs 13:12

I've found lots of wisdom in reading Proverbs.  Also some advice.  Chapter 13 is very interesting reading.

MEMORIES

Memory is a child walking along a seashore.  You never can tell what small pebble it will pick up and store away among its treasured things.  ~Pierce Harris, Atlanta Journal

 Going through a home that has been lived in almost 28 years and contains memorabilia of a lifetime has become almost overwhelming.  I have discovered many "pebbles" that have been picked up and stored away over the years.  The dilemma is what memory to keep with a physical representation and what memories can survive simply in the heart.  There just won't be room as I downsize to keep all memorabilia that has been collected.   

There have been so many vacations, so many milestones, so many life events.  Which ones are most important to memorialize with things, or are the things attached to the memory just clutter.  What to do with that special quilt, the shelves of photos, the slides, the postcards and letters, a grandfathers rocking chair...the list seems endless and every drawer opened reveals more.  Some memory items go back generations.  But the  sorting must be done and the decisions must be made....keep this; dispose of that.  

I keep trying to tell myself I am not dismantling a life, but preparing for a continuation into a new phase of the life and there needs to be room for new memories: That this sorting and disposing of things from the past doesn't destroy or denigrate the past.  I tell myself memories are more than "pebbles" picked up along life's path.  They are things stored in the heart and the heart has an endless amount of space for them. 

Oscar Wilde shares a thought on memories in The Importance of Being Earnest--

 Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us.  

I can do this.  Its not quick and its not easy, but I can do this.  I pray I make wise decisions on what to keep in form of a memory item and what to keep in my heart unattached to a thing.  More impotantly I hope I don't accidentally dispose of  someone else's memory.