Memories

I was doing some much needed Christmas decorating and getting ready for our Thanksgiving with the Olinger family.  The next day my house would be alive with clattering dishes, children, and the noise of family chatter.  I was excited and a little nervous nothing really new for me.  One phone call life changed,  with no more then a blink of an eye life changed that day.  Through this now valley time that I found myself in memories started folding my heart and mind.   I began thinking of memories of a time past, a time when my own teens were yet babies.  One such memory was when my father was having open heart surgery and Dwight and Linda took and cared for my then infant and toddler as their own.  I could not have asked for more caring people to watch and care for them.  I remember the time when we all lived on the same street my mother-in-love and sister-in-love on one end of the street and them on the other end.  The times me and my children and my cousins children I was babysitting for would take walks and chance to say hi how are ya doing.  I remember how Dwight would take Jacob on walks around the house and to the gardens.  He was always patient, kind and loving uncle, brother-in-love and friend.  I remember my niece recently talking about her memories of her mother.  Our memories are the most precious things that can be handed down to us.  It is within our memories that our loved ones live on.  They live within the laughter and yes sometimes our tears.  As long as we remember them and remember their love for us and ours for them they are never really gone.  As I now can see Dwight in heaven the verse  comes to mind Hebrews12:1 "Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,"  He is now one of those witnesses that are waiting for our race down here to be done.A final thought, I remember not to long ago my husband was in the card isle with our kids looking for a birthday card for another family member.  I walk down the isle only to find my husband laughing so hard at a card he was literal crying, and our children watching laughing at him.  As long as I live I shall never forget his laughing nor the card he was laughing at.  It is a memory that I shall cherish as long as I live.  I guess I write all this to say cherish each day and each good memories.  The bad ones aren't worth our time and effort remembering.