The Record Keeper

Looks like you have a very good way to enjoy the life …
Well, we do have fun, and then Lisa documents it. Most people have fun and don’t document it.

That’s a snippet of a conversation Brett had with a coworker earlier this year about our blogs. I think Brett hit on the key point, we document it. Everyone has an interesting life. Everyone has a story to tell. But not everyone documents it. And that makes the difference.

Both of us are HUGE journal keepers. We’re more sporadic now, but both of our families tell, with lots of laughter, stories of us writing our journals when we were younger. We both have stacks and boxes of books we’ve filled over the years. Brett is in the middle (although not working super hard on it, he’s busy learning biblical Hebrew and Greek right now) of typing his journals and adding footnotes.

The other night on one of our Monday night walks we were talking about the record we have of our courtship. Our individual journal entries during that time might have slackened, but because so much of our courtship was through email and instant message (even when we started going on normal people dates), we have an amazing record of that time. While Brett is footnoting his high school years I’m organizing all of those electronic conversations for binding in a book. We’re documenting our lives.

I have several roles in my families. I’m the blanket maker (finishing one for a new family member this week). I’m also the photographer, although that job is spreading more now. Since my mission (where you take so many pictures you stop being able to just stand and smile for them and have to add personality) I’ve stopped counting (for the most part) before snapping the photo. I think you get better photos that way. More true to life ones.

In our home I want to line the hall with photos of our family. I want the walls to reflect who we are. I have a lot of photos of my family, but we needed more of Brett’s to balance it out. So the last time we were in Utah we got his siblings and parents all together and took some. I counted for a few, but my favorites are the ones where I just clicked and didn’t bother counting. They have more life.

Brett jokes he didn’t exist before our wedding because there are almost no photos of him for the ten years prior. I take my camera everywhere and since I’m the one with the camera he’s usually the one in the photo. We do have a growing collection of family portraits though. Some are taken by others, a few were taken with the tripod. But most are taken from an arm’s length away, we’re getting pretty good at it too (gallery courtesy of drop box).

I recently found this post, The Memory Keeper, in reaction to the aftermath of the tornado in Joplin. It made me want to make sure all of my photos have been digitized and backed up in a different location (drop box is also a good way to back up files, it’s how I didn’t lose my files when my hard drive died). To lose them would almost feel like losing the memory of the event.

The fun ancestors are the ones you know the stories about. As they mentioned in our class yesterday, consider “What kind of ancestor do I want to be?” And then go be that ancestor!

However you do it, find a way to be a record keeper, document your life. Paper. Blog. Photos. The best way to make sure the story of your life is told in generations to come is to tell it yourself. So start telling.

Brett & Lisa were here!