Memories

Anniversaries are for celebrating – remembering the past (perhaps the good stuff mostly) and for looking forward to the future. I read it in a book recently (that is my paraphrase of it).
So now as I come up to birthdays etc I’m reminded – oh yeah lets take a moment and remember good times and look forward to how we want the future to look.
I was just in a café where we used to live. I have memories of sitting in there working while the girls were at their day-care, having coffee dates with friends, walking there for coffee, loving sitting by the fire, having many friends and family celebration meals there. It is a great café. It’s even greater now as they are selling ‘peoples coffee’ which is a fair trade one. Like it!
But the only memory that struck me today was how d had taken me there for coffee after the shit had hit the fan with us, and him saying stuff like “I need to date you again” and “I need to take the girls on dates too”. That was pretty nice. It was only 8 months ago but it felt like a slap in the face today.
I’ve also been thinking over these last few days (of being back in town) how I just don’t want to be alone and how I just want everything to be better. Not the way it was, but better, completely new. Now when I think about d, I have to try hard to think of good memories. I am glad to say that there are some, a lot infact.
Living life in this season would be easy to sit and wait – wait for redemption, peace, reconciliation. My ma said recently, something she’d said when I was in my late teens: don’t sit around waiting, live your life. She had meant not to head down to bars to pick up men (good advice from my dear mum) but to live my life and to trust God that he would bring my husband along. Good advice. Now she is the same. Live your life and enjoy things. God is in control.
I guess I want to not focus on bad memories (which is pretty easy to do) but to re-focus my mind on creating new ones plus remembering good and decent and fun times with friends and family.