i don't scrapbook

At the beginning of December, I read The Red Tent.  This book was an interesting fictional take on the stories of Genesis.  The whole concept of the red tent is that it was the place where the women would gather at the start of the new moon and share their stories.  As girls became of age, they too would enter the tent and learn the history of their mothers, their families.

Women are often the ones who are the memory keepers in a family - preserving, telling and retelling the stories that their children and grandchildren will preserve, tell and retell.

The modern version of this is the scrapbook.

I remember well the first time I saw a Creative Memories demonstration.  I loved all the papers, the special scissors and stickers!  Instinctively I knew, however, that I would not be a scrapbooker.   I wondered if there might be a way for me to have the best of both worlds - stickers and pretty paper without the (perceived) pressure of keeping up elaborate albums.

Eventually I found my solution and have been creatively keeping my memories (wink, wink) in my way ever since!

This afternoon, in an effort to keep a renewed-by-the-new-year goal (resolution!), I decided to catch up on a stack of pictures that needed organizing.  I keep my photos in those handy, inexpensive little albums and decorate/notate the covers as much or as little as I see fit.  Here's my finished product:

I think the people who have the on-going hobby of lovely scrapbooks have a special gift, and will likely have real joy as they pass them down to their children.  I have wished at times that I were one of those people, but for the majority of the time, I'm ok with passing down my little books!

To scrapbook or not to scrapbook.....essentially it doesn't matter.  I'm pleased to offer the photos of my children and the things we've done and the places we've been, but what matters more is what I'm passing down to them that will last for eternity.  This is why I love Deuteronomy 6:5-9!  We are to love God with everything in us and pass it down to young lives entrusted to us!

Impress them on your children.  

Talk about them when you sit at home

and when you walk along the road,

when you lie down and when you get up.

(v 7)

Praise God that He knows each of us and our gifting well enough not to add, "when you scrapbook it and when you embroider it onto pillows..." (unless that's your thing!).

May my children see more of Him, lovingly expressed in my life and acts of service!