Snapshots

I have been journaling a lot in the last couple days.

---But Leslie, we haven't seen any new blog posts.

I know, but in my world blogging is what I do for other people, writing that I share.  Journaling is personal.  Those thoughts and feelings that I want to record but perhaps will never share.  I have come to think of my journaling as snapshots of my mind and moods.  Have you ever thought about journaling that way?  Writing it down takes a moment, an hour, a day (you get to chose) of your life and preserves it for you. 

Some moments simply call out for this type of preservation...important days in your life, your wedding, your children's births and so forth.  Some moments beg to be recorded because though they are important to you in the moment, they will fade with time like those funny things your children say, or those funny things that come to your mind that you don't say...  Some moments are just too painful to be shared with other people, but paper and pen can be good companions.

I have other mental snapshots, pictures, sensations, moods that I want to hold on to.  I wonder if writing them down would help?  For example, the simple joy of holding the hand of a small child.  My youngest, Peter, is very strong-willed.  If I dare think to simply take hold of his hand, he will resist me.  However, if I ask, "Peter, may I hold your hand?"  He almost always acquiesses.  He just likes to be asked I suppose, but ah, those moments walking with his little hand in mine...priceless. 

I would keep a mental snapshot of cotton, from the cottonwood trees floating through the air.  How I love seeing that.  One day, I had the windows down and as I stopped for a stop sign a piece of cotton floated in the passenger window and landed on my pant leg.  I marveled at it for a moment, I could have sworn for that moment it was fairy magic or something just as lovely that brought it to me.  Then I started driving again, and it floated away out the other window.  Then I was certain it was carried on fairy dust.

I would save a snapshot of the sound of children's laughter.  And another of the way the dawn breaks on a new day...not just the sunrise, but the dawn, the light that increases and overcomes the dark.

Then I would take these snapshots and send them to myself like postcards, on gloomy days to remind myself that like the dawn, light always follows the darkness.

For now, I'll content myself with writing about snapshots and see what that brings.  What snapshots will you capture today?