I discovered something this weekend while I was scrapbooking. There is something very therapeutic about making a nice layout with beautiful paper for pictures of stressful events.
Very few people knew how hard this summer was for me. There were all kinds of stresses, but chief among them were the constant negative surprises with our new house. Each new discovery added to the financial, time, and health-related strains. For a variety of reasons I felt the need to keep a calm facade and not to let on how close I was feeling to the edge of what I could handle.
This past weekend I had planned to scrapbook wedding pictures, but various circumstances led to me scrapping other photos from this summer, and especially those of the house problems and the resulting demolition and work. I wasn't really looking forward to working with those pictures. First off, they are mostly of ugliness: mold, demolition, lathe, weeds, green board, and, did I mention, mold. And further, they depicted a really low point for me. But as I sorted through the stack and got ready to work with them I was cheered, partially by the fact that they were in the past, and partially by the reminder of all of the people who worked so hard on our house.
Our sons ( 2, 3) were amazing. They worked hard for months. I have tons of pictures of Bethany, hair tied up, sweaty and dirty or covered with paint. I have pictures of Evan working in almost every room of the house, doing anything that needed to be done. We have pictures of the best neighbors in the world working both inside and outside of the house, and of other friends helping out, too.
So I pulled out some of my favorites of the new paper I bought, and a few old favorites, too. And I made some of my favorite layouts in a long time with those pictures. At one point I was actually wiggling in my chair with glee over one of the layouts because it was such fun. And looking back through the pictures with the boys today I feel like I left a lot of that stress on those pages.
5 comments:
That's beautiful! So glad it helped!
I can hardly look at some of our termite-damage pictures. Haven't printed them, even, they're still on the computer. It hurts to look at them. Someday, I'll get them into an album, because I will want to remember how far we've come.
:)
The past is always better than the present.
I think your calm facade was more see-through than you realize. :-) Or maybe I just know it when I see it because I've been there too?
I'm so glad you're through the worst of it!
I've remembered you in prayer many a time this year Jane. Hopefully you are on the recovery from stress side of things and it is nice to be able to laugh about it.
I'm looking forward to seeing those pages, and am glad scrapping them was helpful. I wish we could have helped you more, but am so thankful we could concentrate on praying, especially at those times when we felt helpless to do much of anything else.
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