rechelle's lifelyrics

It’s not a new concept. We all have a propensity to remember our actions and decisions in the most favorable way possible to ourselves. I’ve spent a lot of time in the past few weeks reading through correspondence, journals, and emails spanning more than 3 decades, and have been greatly sobered by the realization that my perspective was not always as precise as I would have liked it to have been. Thank God, He made a way for me to see things I wasn’t seeing fully as the story was unfolding. Thank God, I had questions that made me take a second or third look at what I thought I knew.

We made some changes to our attic space, which enabled Ray to bring out some boxes, from the rafters beyond our accessible attic, which were essentially hidden for many years. I have spent hours poring over the long-lost records to weed out the precious glimpses into our shared, and even before we were together, past – from the superfluous cards and letters that didn’t reflect anything truly meaningful all these years later. I felt overwhelmed as I began, but I kept reminding myself that this was small-scale compared to the enormous document discovery I took on for the Junction City Grange just a couple of years ago. I approached my new task with a similar, streamlined method, in order to separate the “wheat from the chaff,” and then devised a plan to store the meaningful keepsakes in an accessible way. I’m nearing the end of the project, and I thought it would be helpful to share a few tips for any of you who feel the need to hold on to tangible photos, correspondence, or other memorabilia “for now.” At some point, you probably plan to spend some time in reflection on those things you valued enough to pack up and transport from one place to the next in your lifetime.

• Always label and date photos! I can’t tell you how many pictures I have discarded because I have no memory, all these years later, of who the people were, or the circumstance around the picture!
• Always add a date (and even a little note) to sweet creations your children make as you are raising them, so you will know how old they were when they drew or wrote the keepsake. This becomes especially relevant when they have children of their own! If you make the effort to create space for the preservation of these treasures, it is really important to add some sort of relevant data for their archival. There were several drawings or things written that didn’t have the child’s name, or the year they created the item, and consequently, I wasn’t able to add them to a cohesive scrapbook all these years later.
• Try to keep snapshots of seasons, i.e. a few pictures and/or notes of events. Think about telling a story with what you save. I remember learning from some Creative Memories scrapbook classes that 3 pictures of a single event can be sufficient to showcase the memory. Looking back through mounds of pictures and documents spanning over 30 years has absolutely proven this concept.
• You don’t have to keep everything to honor the past, or the people who have influenced your life. It’s totally ok to discard things that don’t have an emotional or physical value to you when you look again after many years. Keep enough to reflect. Keep enough to remember who you were, how you’ve been influenced, and how you’ve grown and/or changed through the years.
• Let the memories teach you the most important lesson: You most likely don’t see everything in the present with the fullness of understanding you will have when reflecting on the facts in review. Consider the wisdom of the saying, “Hindsight is 20/20,” and let your heart explore your past in a way to inform your present, and give you a better vantage point for the path into your future.