The Moments of Our Lives

Life is but a series of moments. It is as simple as that. And those  moments are what make a life. For better or worse this is true. It is easy to remember the big moments. Those moments where you take an amazing vacation or buy your first home or get married or have your children. Those are the moments that we store into our conscious memory.

But what happens to those moments that are filled up with mundane things like cleaning the house or grocery shopping or putting your kid back to bed for the millionth time? I believe that those moments are stored in our subconscious memory. These seemingly insignificant parts our everyday lives - the scenes that seem to be played out over and over again as if we are living a perpetual Groundhog Day movie scene are the ones that a life a built upon. In those moments of ordinariness extraordinary things are happening - we are writing the story of not only our lives, but we are helping to shape the story that each of our children will create in his/her own life.

I have been looking through some old pictures of my children. Most of the pictures are from just a couple of years ago, but they seem as if they were from an era gone by. And in some ways they are. What struck me most as I have been viewing these photos is that it isn't the big grand pictures that one would think would be favorites - birthday pictures, Christmas, vacations, etc... - I am finding myself most drawn to the pictures that capture our every day lives. Pictures of my family taking a hike. Pictures of my kids hanging out by the pool or jumping on the trampoline. Pictures of my kids exploring in a river we used to go to in Ohio. Pictures of them reading books together or completing schoolwork. Pictures of them building with Legos together. THOSE are my favorites. The funny thing is that none of these memories would be recalled if I hadn't taken those pictures because they are stored in my subconscious memory. The photo alone is what pulled the memory out of its hiding place and brought it to the forefront of my mind.

This got me to thinking about how many moments I have not remembered with my kiddos and will never be able to recall again because they were just ordinary and mundane things that I did not photograph. Had I the ability to look back on them now I would be able to cherish them for what they really were: moments of building this wonderful life we have created.

Now I cannot take a picture of every moment in our life. (That is my mom's job - she takes so many pictures it is unreal, BUT I am so thankful she does now because I have those memories to look back on even if I was completely annoyed when she took them.) But I can journal about those moments.

When the new year came around I bought myself a beautiful new journal with this as the cover:

I was drawn to this journal because it made me realize that it is in embracing regularness of life that makes it extraordinary. I am living an extraordinary life, so are you, all because of the regularness of it. I made the decision to journey every day of our lives this year. I wanted to capture the big things that I usually journal about, but I also want to capture  all the little things that make up our days as a family. Because in the end it is those simple regular seemingly ordinary moments that are going to be the ones to touch my heart and soul most deeply when I look back on them in the future. It is those moments that are most important  because it will show me all the pieces that went into the making of not only my life story, but my children's as well.

In order to do this everyday, usually twice a day, I will steal away from the kids and just write down what has happened so far that day. I include concerns and bigger problems too, but mostly I just write about the small details of our life. I find the whole experience very therapeutic as well. Believe it or not, there is quite a bit that I do not share on this blog and by being committed to journaling everyday I am also getting stuff off of my chest that would otherwise sit in the pit of my stomach brewing until I exploded on someone (usually my poor husband).

I have no doubt that I will fill this journal before the year is out. In addition to writing out all of the details of our day I also include three things that I am thankful for from that day. Some days are filled with beautiful and poetic "thankfuls". (This is the word we use in our house to describe all that we are thankful for.) Other days this year (and the year is so young!) have been filled with less poetic things such as: I am thankful I made it through the day. Because that is what life is like, right? It is the beautiful and the mundane all mixed together creating our beautiful, unique, one of a kind life stories.