I’m feeling totally relaxed at the end of a blissfully calm day…

I spent a cozy Sunday at home, with a fuzzy blanket, coffee, a nice soak in the tub (yes, with lavendar scented bubbles…)

I didn’t read much… I didn’t write at all, until now…

I sat, and I thought… reflective thoughts, just whatever floated to the surface of my mind thoughts…

and I realized, I was sifting memories.

The car crash that totalled my Belinda car and caused the whiplash that kept me at home today may have been timed according to Divine will.

In fact, I’m convinced it was.

I needed this weekend to be still, to sift through things properly, and God knows my active personality won’t slow down unless forced 🙂

So, forced as I was, I had only my thoughts for company, and all the time to sift them well instead of just ignoring them.

I recently taught my students about the Klondike gold rush, and the method that prospectors used to pan for gold (scooping dirt into a special pan, pouring water through, rinsing out the dirt and stones and leaving only the gold).

I realized today, that that’s exactly how I need to treat memories.

Some memories are painful, or ugly, and it’s so easy to just dump them out. To refuse them a place in your story.

Other memories are beautiful. They’re priceless, and we focus on them.

But when both are woven together, how do we remember the beautiful times without letting the negative parts darken them? How do we avoid losing the beauty buried beneath the hurt-filled stories we throw out?

And the answer I came to… we sift.

Some chapters can only be sifted by letting tears flow over the memories. Somehow, in that process, the hurt is washed away… it slowly fades… and we can smile through the tears at the good that was present in those times.

They might be tremulous smiles, but more beautiful than those who’ve never known pain.

They are the smiles of a survivor. A fighter. Someone who dared to face their story in completeness, and sifted until they found something worth smiling about.

You know, good things can become lost when they get buried in layers of ugliness.

It’s tedious work to dig through it all and unearth the gold…

It would be so much easier to throw it all out and refuse to think about it.

In sifting parts of my life, I realized I’ve done that – I’ve remembered the bad and lost sight of the good.

How can I “grow through what I go through” if the miracles, the lessons, the blessings, and all the beauty in the journey is lost?

The times when God is most precious, most real, have been in my darkest hours. If I refuse those memories a place in my story, how will I keep the faith-building moments sprinkled throughout?

But if I can wash away the layers of hurt, confusion, anger, or whatever else you might have piled up… sift through them and bathe them in tears… and let them go:

Then all I’ll be holding is the gold.

And everything will be beautiful.

Only the good remains.