Last month,
during an Instagram scroll, I happened upon a post from the account @wonderfilled.days.
She shared a post that said “Maybe instead of sharing our Amazon hauls, we
should try sharing items we’ve owned forever. Here are some of the things we’ve
owned the longest.”
The next slides showed her Rival
Crock Pot, which she has owned for 26 years, her dishes (which I recognized as
popular among some of my own friends who were married around 26 years ago…),
her 10-year-old living room furniture, a 21-year-old glider, and a proper
stereo system her husband owned before they were married 26 years ago.
I’d like to first pause and
marvel that the Crock Pot and stereo still work after such a long life. I’m
pretty certain Ryan and I are on our third slow cooker in 13 years of marriage,
because the crocks keep cracking! I suppose it’s true that they just don’t make
things like they used to.
That aside, the premise of her
post pushed me to pause significantly. We are run over by influencers
influencing everywhere we turn. There are those who influence on purpose,
because it’s their literal job, and there are those like me who influence for
no financial gain, but simply because we enjoy sharing things we find that are
fun. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it unless the trap of it
all pushes us into discontent with what we have.
I took a screenshot of her post
and returned to it many times over the last month. I started looking around our
home to see how much of what we have carries a story that goes back any length
of time at all. So for today – and maybe other days later this year – I want to
skip over the shopping haul and celebrate the long haul of a painting that
hangs in our home.
In truth, it hasn’t had a
terribly long haul in our home. But it sure does have a story.
My great uncle painted this
piece, though I don’t know when. I’m sure I was probably a little girl, if I
was even born at all. He was my grandma’s brother, and though we didn’t live
terribly close, I knew him and saw him now and then.
The painting probably belonged
to my grandma, though I don’t have specific memories of it hanging in her home.
When she died, it ended up in my parents’ house. And when they moved to Swiss
Village and were downsizing, I wanted to keep it.
I have no idea what bridge this
painting represents – if it even points to a specific bridge at all. But I
wanted it because I love covered bridges. Anytime we visit a county, I
want to see every covered bridge that lives there. There’s a red one much like
this one back in Kokomo. I had some of my senior pictures taken there, and Ryan
and I liked to visit the bridge on date nights. And now we have a red covered
bridge in the county where we live. And we go there often. We’ve had family
pictures taken there.
Red covered bridges are part of
our story, and it made all kinds of sense for this family painting to be part
of our story too.
Jonathan (our pastor and friend)
always says we are shaped by the stories we tell. And this picture tells part
of our story. The story of the family who shaped me, and the story of the
places that have been significant to us in our travels and relationship.
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