Of Pickles & Graduations

It's funny how a simple hors d'oeuvre can invoke such a deep and vivid memory.   
I was standing at the kitchen counter today, my hands covered in green while my two year old tugged at my leg. 

"Mommy, why you take so long?"

I smiled as I stared into his deep blue eyes that always see more than I expect.  I looked back at my hands, covered in a mix of pickle and ham and mayo, the fruit of my labor carefully laid out on a plate for a mid day snack...and the setting before me began to fade. 

Memories resurfaced of a day that seems so far and yet so close.  My hands are once again a sticky mess, but this time the magnitude of my task has stained them a nearly permanent shade of green. 

I laugh along with my young not yet sister-in-law as we compare our hands and our eyes grow wide at the plates piled high with enough pickle roll ups to feed an army.  The man who has only recently captured my heart walks behind me and sneaks a bite while I playfully swat him away. 

The cozy little kitchen is crowded with family preparing for an open house, a celebration of a high school graduation.  I'm trying hard to remember the names of immediate family, knowing full well that I'll only be bombarded with more names and faces today than I'll ever remember. 

Still I smile, because no matter how much chaos and noise fills this house, it feels like home to me. 

Now ten years later, I laugh as my six year old walks in the kitchen and her own eyes grow wide at the sight of a different kind of lunch than she's used to. 

"That looks SO yummy, mommy!"

I look around at the chaos and noise that fills my days now and I wonder at how much has changed since that May day so long ago... 

In just a few hours, my husband will walk through the door after a long day of work and I'll greet him with the warmth and love of a wife who is grateful for the man who captured her heart so long ago and has weathered the storms of life since them, daily choosing love even when it's hard. 

It was during that long ago visit that I knew...he was my home and his family would be mine. 

I think about the place that became my Michigan home...burned to ashes...and the new house whose walls are just beginning to understand the stories of a past that has been broken and mended and is still being pieced together today. 

I think of the good and the bad of memories that have weaved a far different tapestry than any of us could have imagined.  I ache at the pieces that are still frayed and wonder at how they'll ever be mended...but I stand amazed still at the way pieces that were once broken and singed have been made new. 

So many of the events and circumstances that have unfolded in the years between don't make sense to me.  They certainly aren't how I would have written the story.

But God.

Even when I don't understand, He knows the beginning, middle, and end, and how it all fits together.  Looking back and uncovering even the painful pieces that are much easier left buried reminds me of the good that's been there all along and the God who has never forsaken.  And sometimes that journey back to the past is just what I need to walk forward with hope and confidence into a future yet unknown.