A friend shared a picture of the Christmas tree her kiddos decorated that was not aesthetically pleasing. It made me smile and reminded me of the sugar cookies my mom and I baked using the recipe offered in my cookie monster book. I was in first grade and remember my mom setting me on the kitchen counter, holding the book open and helping my mom pour and mix the ingredients. Those cookies tasted terrible, they were legitimately nasty. But the memory of that moment stays warm in my heart. The Florida Museum of Natural History used to live in the heart of the University of Florida campus before it moved to the less cramped real estate where it now resides. My father would take me about every week to visit this museum in Gainesville. The entrance of its permanent exhibit was a cave with a walk through passage. I remember a rattle snake curled up in a cave crevice. We would eventually walk into the “touch and feel” room that was filled with taxidermy animals including a giant bear standing on its hind legs. But it also had an endless array of glass cases and drawers filled with feathers, fossils, skeletons, collections of beetles, moths, butterflies, bats, etc. It even had some live animals in aquariums. I never got tired of going there. It nourished my wonder and respect for nature and animals.
The importance of having those moments that become memories is HUGE. I knew this and when I became a mother, I was very intentional in trying to create an ocean of moments for our babies. I know that our babies will one day be adults on their own, going through valleys of life that we all go through. My prayer and hope is that Jason and I created so many moments of joy and laughter and wonder and love that they need only barely reach and cup their hand to scoop up a moment to remember it and allow it to serve as an anchor or shelter in their storm. May the moments created for them be the glowing ember that pierces even their darkest valley and shows them the next step to take.
I am 44 today…and one of my greatest lessons learned so far is that I know how to love because I was loved by my parents and by my heavenly Father. That love is experienced and carried in life’s moments.
“We love because he first loved us.” 1John4:19
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