Mementos

"I feel strongly about mementos, memorabilia you call them." -Edy Beale (Grey Gardens)
I love them. They are, to me, those things you keep in a box or on your wall that remind you of a place in your history that touches you deeply, or brings in a well of fresh water, because you remember the events that took place when you where there in that time and place. I have a molded plastic bunny rabbit that I got out of the quarter machines at my grandparent's restaurant. The memory attached to that is priceless to me. I would go up to the restaurant and bus tables, and hang out with the waitresses and get their entire life story. Every time my parents would come up there I would ask for a quarter to go put in what my dad called the "junk machines." The Chuck Wagon was a greasy spoon restaurant that my grandparents bought as an investment. I remember my uncle managed the it and sometimes when I was lucky I got to go up and work.....if I only knew now that that wasn't fun, I probably wouldn't today. I have kept that little thing in a drawer, it makes me happy.
I was thinking the other day about my life, as I pretty much do every time I am faced with a crossroad. I think of how blessed I am to live in America, Texas, Amarillo. The sunsets are unbelievable. While I was thinking God reminded me about how the Israelites would place twelve stones piled up in a place of remembrance. I like that idea. Placing twelve stones in significant places in your life, at the place where God did something awesome, and showed His faithfulness to you even while there are billion upon billions of others. He paused and came to your rescue, deliverance, and mercy. It is in those times, that we have a choice to make, develop our relationship with God so we are not in those places, or simply thank Him for getting us out of another hole, drought, or desert place. These things aren't always bad, sometimes they are just god showing us He cares. I read the Bible and I see how much He loves and cares for us, but when He puts those words in to action and proves His word to be true, it proves to us that His Word is true and that gives us faith to believe the impossible.
One of the stone monuments for me, was when I was in Clovis working my tail off for 8 months, and then suddenly, I was offered the job to work with the Muscular Dystrophy Association, and I realized why I went through many of the trainings and trials that I did. All of my experiences to that point readied me to take the job head on. Now, I stand here in the grassy knoll and happen upon a fork in the path that God is taking me. I don't know really what path God wants me to go down, but I do know that His BEST, is what I want. That, truthfully, is all I need. Thank God I am not in control of my own destiny, but simply pointed in the direction I should go. I love that feeling, it isn't my decision to make, but rather His to show me.

Vaya con Dios

-b