Memories Enough

Yesterday I worked hard on the scrapbook I've been making to cover the great move of 2016. It's the chronicle not just of the nuts and bolts of moving, but of the beautiful story God wrote with the purchase and sale of our homes. I showed it to Ryan when I finished working for the day, and as he scrolled through the 130-some pages of the book, he said, "I think I know why we've been so tired."

Reliving our last night at our old house reminded me of a beautiful moment God and I shared that I wanted to pass on to you once I had time to process it!

The last evening Ryan and I spent at our old house was just two days before we signed it away to its new owner. It was our 41st monthiversary, and we went over on a gloomy, rainy night to mow one more time, to do one more sweep of the place {to make sure we hadn't forgotten anything} and to say our final goodbyes.

After I helped mow the yard, I asked Ryan if I could have some time just to sit and think, and he was kind to finish up the yard work alone so I could do my mental processing.

I went upstairs into the bedroom that had most recently served as our office, sat down on the carpet remnant covering the hardwood floor, and leaned up against the window.

The room echoed in its physical emptiness, and the light was dim, since we'd taken all the lamps to our new home, but in my mind, the room was full and bright with stories and memories.

I let my mind wander back to my childhood, when I slept in the big four-poster bed Grandma and Grandpa kept in that room. I remembered the rolling blinds that snapped to the top in the mornings, letting the bright sunshine flood in. I remembered the night Grandma woke me up to tell me we had to get to the hospital because Grandpa had taken a bad turn. I remembered moving my white metal daybed into that room the day I moved in as an adult. I remembered waking up on cold winter mornings and snuggling deep in the bed. I remembered calling 911 on the neighbors across the street when I saw one of them breaking down the door in the middle of the night. {That was many years ago. They had long since moved away.} I remembered transforming the room into my home office and writing hundreds of thousands of words.

I remembered all those things, just about that room. And then my  mind moved to all the other rooms and I kept remembering. I stretched to search for memories, inside and out, and then I stared at the scratched floor that has seen more memories even than I have, and I asked the question:

 Had I done enough? Had I taken enough pictures? Had I written down enough of the moments? Had I captured enough of life in this house, between words and photos? This was my last chance. This was my last night to hold keys that could get me in the door. Did I need to do more? Did I need to capture something while I still could?

And God stopped me right there.

It's enough.

He impressed on my heart that any memory I needed to capture had been, in some way, captured. It was preserved on a hard drive somewhere, pressed into a scrapbook, scribbled in a journal, or at the very least, etched on the corner of my mind.

If the memory wasn't captured, it wasn't a memory I needed to have. I had done enough. No regrets. I had worked hard to capture life in that house, and it was good enough. More than good enough, actually. It was more than adequate to carry me through the rest of my life.

And it doesn't end with the house. It extends to the corners of my life. I know I have a reputation as the Bekahrazzi, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I want to capture life because when life changes or something about it ends, I want to know I did all I could to tell a story.

One of Ryan's co-workers passed away unexpectedly a few days ago. I scrolled through my phone and found a picture I'd taken of him just a week before his death, when I happened to be visiting Ryan and documenting a corn hole tournament. It wasn't a posed photo. It was just a haphazard action shot I snapped from the corner, hoping to be mostly oblivious. Who knew that in a week's time, that would be a cherished photo for our scrapbook, because it captured the last time Ryan would ever partner with him in a game?

The memories don't have to be perfect to be enough. The pictures don't have to be flawless. The words don't have to be eloquent. They just need to be.