A look back

This afternoon I checked out E's blog.  She had posted pictures of everyone at lunch yesterday at Destihl.  The pictures were great and I know when I look back at them in the future, I will remember all the fun of that day.

When I finished looking at the photos, I took a trip down memory lane and read E's very first blog post -- Christmas Day 2007.  Then I read her posts for 2008, all 78 of them.

It really was a journey into the not so distant past.  I remembered some of the events that E had written about, but others had faded from my memory.  I enjoyed looking at pictures from weddings and family celebrations -- and I especially loved the pictures of sweet Penny as a little kitten.  She looks very much the same today, not much bigger than she was when she came to live with E and N.

As I read through the year, E grew from a somewhat nervous newbie graduate student and TA into a confident scholar and instructor.  Just as she had at GBN and Hope, she gave graduate studies her very best effort.  And, she didn't just scrape by, she excelled!

Graduate school wasn't the only challenge E faced in 2008, as during that same period, she and N were also navigating the uncharted waters of their first year of marriage.  I'm sure it wasn't always smooth sailing, but E's posts underscored their willingness to work together as a team and to stay on course.  (Can you tell that N is a sailor?)

When I talked with E tonight, I told her what I had done and how much fun it had been to re-read her posts.  While we were talking, she looked through a few of her old posts and agreed it was fun to peek back at the moments that she had memorialized.

I hope that as time allows, E will be able to go back over more of her previous posts.  Some of them are funny and lighthearted, but others are more serious and reflect challenges that she and N were experiencing at the time.  Re-reading and reliving some of those later posts could be similar to the Biblical concept of revisiting stones of remembrance.  At the site of a great event, the Lord instructed the Israelites to build a monument of stones, piled one on top of another, to serve as a visual reminder of the way He had worked in their lives to give them victory over an enemy or triumph over a difficult situation.  In the same way, God was at work in E and N's lives -- knitting them together as a married couple, growing their faith, helping them through illness, stress and uncertainty -- and E's blog posts are a testimony to His presence and action in that crucial first year of marriage and graduate school.  

I'm glad that E decided to start a blog.  I've enjoyed knowing what was happening in her and N's life -- seeing their pictures and reading their stories.  And I'm very glad that she and N will always have this record to return to whenever they need to be reminded of God's love and care for them in the biggest and smallest details. 

The very first blogger probably never envisioned all the ways that blogs would connect, encourage, and inspire readers and subsequent bloggers, but God knew that this new method of communication could be the 21st century technological version of the Old Testament stones of remembrance.