Thankful Thursday: I’m Thankful for My Memories

When I was growing up, we took lots of home videos. You remember the ones that were taken with those huge camcorders that you had to hoist onto your shoulder? They made you feel like the director of a movie. Lol. Over the years, the video camcorder got smaller and smaller until there was one that you could record with by simply holding it up in the palm of your hand with a strap secured around the backside of your hand. That’s the last kind of camcorder that my paternal grandparents had. Of course, nowadays we have cell phones.

My family always made a point to record the big events: holidays, birthday parties, graduations and vacations – and we even had some times in between when we recorded a day in the life of our family just for fun.

Since my grandmother’s death, I’ve been slowly transferring all her old VHS and camcorder tapes to the computer where I’ll eventually rip them onto DVDs. I let the home videos transfer in the background as I go about my editing, and every now and then I glance up and see snippets of those days gone by, and I am so thankful that I have these tangible memories to look back on.

Which brings me to today’s Thankful Thursday: Today I am thankful for my memories, both for the tangible representations of them and the intangible ones that I have locked away inside my head. Old photographs, home videos and other family heirlooms and memorabilia are all great for remembering loved ones and days gone by, but the memories that we keep locked away inside us are the most precious ones because they are the ones that can never be taken from us, and I just so thankful that the Lord allows us to keep those memories – both the good and bad, for the good fill us with happiness while the bad provide us with learning experiences.

What are you thankful for this Thursday?