The Good Ole Days

Earlier on Face Book I saw a couple of pictures of some of my best friends from High School and I missed those guys and those times... I even thought "whoa those were the good ole days." You always hear people, especially old people say that. And seeing as I am approaching 30 ( 52 days from now) I guess it is age appropriate for me to have those thoughts. Haha! But the more I sat there and thought about it the more I remembered about those "good ole days". I don't know if God made our brains to remember the good things first or if that is just my tendency, but I quickly remembered all the fun we had skipping school to "go run errands" for our teacher, roller blading on Sunday afternoons, and spending countless hours at one anothers' houses, so much so our parents might have forgotten who kids were really their own. Life was easier then and less complicated and my memory wants me to remember it that way.

But was it really any better than now? During those "good ole days" my little brother had a serious and almost fatal bout with cancer, which forced me to spend a lot of my senior year of high school doing things that most kids don't have to worry about. Worrying about my mom, dad and step mom getting along in the same hospital room, worrying about my brother who did technically die at least once who lost all his hair and most of his friends (it is hard to explain to 8th graders that cancer is not contagious) worrying about my mom and our finances when she had to take so much time off work to stay at the hospital, and worrying about if I should even go off to college.

During those "good ole days" my best friend since 3rd grade and I grew apart and I don't know why, it was weird and awkward and hard.

During those "good ole days" I wasn't near as close to God as I am now, I was a baby and was still just drinking milk.

During those "good ole days" my car actually got keyed in the church parking lot a couple weeks after a fresh, purple paint job. Not every car in the lot was keyed, mine and a couple others were specially chosen for it.

I guess it wasn't all good, huh? And isn't that how it always is? Good mixed with bad. Beautiful mixed with ugly. Easy mixed with hard. And I wonder how many years it will take before I am looking back at pictures from this interesting, trying, frustrating stage of life and calling this the "good ole days" because we all know I will remember the good in this time first too. I will remember how Raegan is so cute in her desire to be a mermaid, and Hadley is so beautiful and amazingly cool and athletic (which is shocking seeing as she is my child, and all of you who knew me as a child know I was none of those things) and Caed has the perfect haircut to match her inner sassy pixie and she is praying and talking about accepting Christ. Beautiful moments, great memories, I guess I am living the "good ole days" right now!!