Memorials

About a year ago, I had a conversation with a friend about homeschooling. She asked how I was able to get everything done. I admitted the simple truth: I don't do all the things I would like to. She then asked me, "How do you sleep at night?" It was an innocent question, asked by a woman who knows how this job of motherhood is never ending. I answered with a heartfelt reply, about how I really had to trust God for sleep. We ended our conversation and I did not think much more about it.
However, that night in bed, when sleep eluded me again, I immediately started thinking about all the things I did not get done, all the ways this child or that one needed to improve. I was pondering about how tired I always seem to be, and how there are so many of them and just one of me. I discovered that I was not able to sleep that night because I let anxiety rule.



In the light of day, it was easy to reign in my thoughts and give them to God. It was a warm spring day after a bitter Michigan winter, so all eight of us were able to escape to the park across the street. I was watching my children; my fourteen year old nephew playing spies with my eight year old, the two older girls were entertaining the little girls, and my eldest asking if he could take a walk with me so we could talk. (A sixteen year old boy who wants to talk to his mom!) Sunshine, laughter, and everyone was having fun. I was intensely grateful, and the anxiety of the night was gone.
I thought of all the memorials the Israelites built. Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and Joshua, they constructed altars or memorials to God. This day was such a blessing, a memorial that I needed to write down and come back to. The sun will not always be shining, we won't always get along , and the hard days will come. When they do, it will be so easy for me to forget the wonderful ones, and difficult to forget the not-so-good.

It is so easy to look at the mess around you, the bad attitudes, the things that never seem to get done, and to forget all the good God has done for you. So simple to focus on what is not important, and all those thoughts that matter to the world, but shouldn't be vital to us.

Lord, help me to remember the memorials you put before me, help me to be grateful and to see you in everything.

Today I am thankful for these memorials:

148. A wedding picture on the wall that reminds me of 23 years with my husband

149. Baby pictures in the hallway

150. Rocks from the beach where we have vacationed for 12 years

151. Pictures of my sister Julie

152. A folder filled with cards from friends

154. Shelves of great books I have read to the kids

155. Recipes written by the hand of a friend or relative

157.Pictures on my screen saver, showing a life of friends, family and memories

158. Kids with better memories than me that say "Mom, remember when...."

159. A Bible, underlined and written in, reminding me of all His promises I have held on to


160. the faces that sit around our dinner table every night reminding me of how He has blessed me (He settles the barren woman in her home, as a happy mother of children, Praise the Lord Ps.113:9)


Joshua 4:2-9
"Choose twelve men from among the people, one from each tribe, and tell them to take up twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, from right where the priests stood, and to carry them over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight."
So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, and said to them, "Go over before the ark of the LORD your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, 'What do these stones mean?' tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever."
So the Israelites did as Joshua commanded them. They took twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, as the LORD had told Joshua; and they carried them over with them to their camp, where they put them down. Joshua set up the twelve stones that had been in the middle of the Jordan at the spot where the priests who carried the ark of the covenant had stood. And they are there to this day.