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I watch HGTV and I remember hearing one of the designers say that you can tell by the way someone’s home is decorated, what’s important to them. The designer also said the decor should be able to tell the families story – you should feel in the atmosphere what they are like. Ever since hearing that, I tend to notice that is true…
Does the home have random pictures just to fill blank space? Does the home look like a museum where you’re not comfortable to chill out? What about a home where it looks like the family just bought the showroom floor? Then – my favorite – the home where family pictures abound! Every little shelf having a picture on it and the hallways full of collages of kid pics and family vacations. I guess I like this style the most because I’m drawn to looking at the pics and seeing the memories spanning generations.
I recently got to help clear out an 88-year-old family member’s home, as they were downsizing, and from the start of the process it was clear what was important to them. Walking into the front door, every wall having various shapes and sizes of pictures. Some black and white, some color, and all sorts of different frames. Dozens of faces of people I didn’t recognize. So of course I had to get the stories behind them!
One pic that really stood out was black and white, with 2 little boys in a farm setting. Turns out one of the little boys was our family member! As he described the pic, it was as if he stepped back in time to the day it was taken. Telling me about every individual in the picture, and where they worked, and their kids – and their kids’ kids – then, bringing us down the hall to the next generation. His married life and then his kid and grandkids… It never occurred to him that he subconsciously hung the pictures in a generational timeline! Weddings and birthdays and Christmases and LOVE – lots of Love surrounding Him all the time as he had these picture memories hanging everywhere…
I’m so grateful we got the chance to hear these stories; the legacy of my kids’ grandparents and great grandparents and the tough times they grew up in. It was sobering for our kids to hear about ration stamps that were given out during the war. What!? You actually could not buy food like sugar and bread whenever you needed it?!
The new place will not accommodate all of these pictures, so as we pack them up, we bring them to our home for storage, boxing up memories of another generation. I look around our home and I’ve got memory walls too; stories of weddings and birthdays and holidays over the years of my family. But I don’t have the generation before – so I make room for them. I love seeing the previous generation represented on our walls, the reminders of the simple life. We are so thankful to be living the blessed, abundant life we get to live because of the sacrifices of our older family members. I overheard my son, pointing out one of these freshly hung pictures, bragging about his paratrooper grandpa and how he served during the Korean War.
Funny, sometimes you think things go unnoticed…
I find myself looking at my pictures hanging around my house a little more lately, focusing on the day the pic was taken and the people in it. Taking in all of these treasured memories of stories of yesterday and I smile as I think that one day my kids will be reliving the same experience with their kids and sharing the stories the pictures tell. So I guess a picture really is worth a thousand words!
Matthew 6:21 “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”