by Linda Veath Cox
Memories. I love it when they pop up when we least expect them and make us smile. Special times with loved ones. Trips we have taken. God’s provision at just the right time. Christmas and Easter celebrations or just a run-of-the-mill day.
A memory that keeps popping up for me of late is about an Easter long ago. Mom loved hiding Easter eggs for me to hunt. And even though I had “seen the light” about the Easter bunny, Mom continued to hide eggs. Until that fateful year when I awoke on Easter morning to find no eggs.
I just shrugged it off, thinking Mom had decided I was too old to hunt eggs. Until Mom came charging out of her bedroom. The panic-stricken look on her face told me that was not the case. With a house full of people until midnight, she’d simply forgotten to hide the eggs.
Nothing would do but for me to return to my bedroom while Easter Bunny Mom hid the eggs. Then once more, and this for the final time, the “little girl” searched for eggs while Mom, and now Daddy, were grinning from ear to ear. Just as I am grinning from ear to ear as I remember it.
In her book Roses in December, Marilyn Willett Heavilin wrote about God giving us memories so that we might have roses in December. Memories to warm our hearts in those December times in our lives when all seems gray and dreary.
Like flowers, God plants these memories along our life’s path for us to gather as we walk with Him. Sometimes they are easy-to-find, fun memories like Easter egg hunts and a mother’s love. But sometimes—when life takes an unexpected turn—we have to look harder to find them. But wherever we find them, they become part of a bouquet of memories that grows more beautiful with every passing year.
And Mary quietly treasured these things in her heart and thought about them.
~ Luke 2:19 LB
Happy Mother’s Day to all those mothers, daughters, and friends
who bring the fragrance of Christ’s love to our bouquet of memories.
[…] A Bouquet of Memories […]