I’ve been reading The Gift of Wonder: Creative Practices for Delighting in God by Christine Aroney-Sine over the last month or so. The book is about recapturing the joy of God, not the “very serious, workaholic type of God” many of us are used to hearing about in church. At the end of each chapter, she has a small practice for the reader to participate in to tangibly connect with joy, imagination, playfulness, and more things that can enrich our spiritual walk.
In one chapter, the practice starts, “Let’s reminisce and reflect on what God enjoys about who we are and what we do.” She asks the reader to reflect on our life, highlighting the joy spots throughout the years and meditating on the struggles that God walked us through. In the end, she asks us to consider how we can strengthen our awareness of God’s enjoyment in our lives.
What restorative practices enhance your awareness of God’s enjoyment? How could you nurture and strengthen these? What transformative practices enabled you to grow and draw closer to God?
This reminder was especially relevant to me right now because I’ve been scrapbooking over the last month. I’ve been working from home since Aurora was born in early March, and we moved into this house just a few months before that. So while unpacking, organizing, and decorating, I’ve seen just how many pictures I have that aren’t being displayed and how much memorabilia of mine (plane tickets from trips, cards from friends and family, and other miscellaneous things I’ve kept throughout the years) is hidden away in shoeboxes.
The scrapbook I’m working on right now spans from mine and Ryan’s first date in January 2016 to our honeymoon in September 2018. I’ve had the joy of reminiscing over our year in Spain, the ways we rediscovered Oregon when we came home, and our rainy wedding when family and friends gathered to celebrate.
This has been really helpful for me during this pandemic. Even though I’m at home all the time, these reflections remind me that I’m not alone, even if I feel lonely or isolated sometimes. God has led me through so much, and he’ll lead me through this, too.
I also find reflecting on life experiences to be helpful to connect the past me to the present me. We all go through changes, some of them monumental. With change after change, it’s easy to feel disconnected from my younger self, even though she’s my foundation. If you look back on your past and think, “I don’t even know who that person is”, the practice of listening to your life may be helpful.
Here are some ideas on how you can reflect on your life and see the joyful moments you’ve had throughout the years.
Scrapbooking/Photo Books
Break out your old photos (or new ones!), your crafting supplies, and make a scrapbook. It’s a fun way to play with your photos, look back on good times, and do something artistic. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the bloated retail world of scrapbooking or the perfect pages on Pinterest. Just keep it simple and be creative. Paste a couple photos, buy some stickers, draw some doodles, and label photos to record the details you may forget as time goes on.
It’s just as fun to look back on the scrapbooks. I made three scrapbooks when I was younger, and I think it’s charming when I see my spelling mistakes, bad handwriting, or cheesy captions.
Another option if you’re not feeling crafty is a printed photo book from a place like Shutterfly or Mixbook. You can customize the book or just have the software plug photos in for you. You could make one for yourself, or you could gift it to someone else. I’ve had three printed so far: one of my first trip to Europe, another of mine and Ryan’s trip in Spain, and a Father’s Day one with Aurora’s first three months.
1 Second Everyday Videos
The 1 Second Everyday app is a video diary. Each day, you keep a one second clip and at the end of a year (or a period of time you decide), you mash them all together. I’ve done it two years: 2016 and 2018, and Ryan and I are each doing our own for Aurora’s first year. It’s a really neat way to record your life and see a chunk of time pass in a six minute video. I appreciate that it simplifies the recording process. Even if I didn’t take any pictures (but believe me, I have and always will), I’d still have these videos, and 365 seconds can cover a lot.
Reminiscing with loved ones
Lots of family and friends do this naturally, especially ones that don’t see each other often. We launch into old stories, trying to recall certain details or discussing our different vantage points. The next time you’re spending time with someone with whom you share a lot of memories, try to intentionally talk about the past. Bring up a vacation you went on together or ask them what they thought about a certain person you both knew.
Conversation is one way to reminisce, and you can also incorporate other things like:
- Eat a meal or have a drink you had in the past with them. Maybe it’s something from your travels or it’s a meal your mom used to make when you were kids.
- Revisit a place you used to go with them.
- Listen to music, either songs you listened to together or ones that were popular at the time.
- Watch a movie you saw together in the past.
- Look at old pictures together.
Guided Journaling
Journaling is a great process to connect with your emotions in the present moment or to meditate on your past. If you journaled in the past, read back on those entries and reconnect with who you were when you wrote it. Pay attention to what made you feel happy or fulfilled. Don’t judge your younger self for anything they felt. Those emotions are long gone now, and they served a specific purpose.
Here are some journal prompts you can use to reflect on your life:
- Try to recall a time as a child when you were particularly excited and happy. It could be a vacation, a new friend, or even a new movie. Write about that memory in detail.
- During your childhood, who showed you the most love? Who did you show most of your love to? Write about that person or those people.
- If your life, or some big journey in your life, was made into a movie, what would be the opening scene?
- Make a playlist for the soundtrack to the movie of your life.
- “If I had a chance to talk to someone I love who’s died, I would say…”
- What has been your favorite vacation in your life so far? Write about one specific memory on that trip.
- Where have you liked living the most so far? What did you like about it?
- Make a list of people in your life who you’re grateful for. Instead of just family and friends, think also of people you no longer talk to, acquaintances, and people whose names you’ve forgotten.
- In what positive ways have you changed from who you were ten years ago?
- When has your body surprised you with its resilience, strength, or perseverance?
If you try any of these practices, I’d love to know how they went. Drop a comment below. If you have any other ideas on ways to reconnect with your past and rediscover the joy you’ve experienced in your life, I want to hear about those, too.