Promises and Memories

Willow tree figurines have been special to me from the moment I first saw them, and now they are even more precious.

I started collecting them when I first met my husband. He got me the "Together" figurine for my birthday and proposed to me later that year. My family started to catch on that I liked Willow Tree so I started getting and giving the angels as gifts.

For our first Christmas after we were married, Dave gave me the first installment to my nativity set (the leading roles of the Christmas story) with the promise that each year he would add to it until I had the whole Nativity collection. We never had a second Christmas together. In September of 2005 we were in a car accident together and he didn't make it. We were moving up to Fort St. John where he had started a new job and had been working for the two and a half months prior. I stayed behind to pack up our place and get things ready for the move and he came down a couple days before the moving day. When he arrived, he presented me with a final Willow Tree figurine called "Promise". Two days later, my life changed. I hold on the promises he gave me. Promises that he will never leave me, that he will go to the ends of the earth for me, and that he will always take care of me. In such a way, God makes us promises as a husband just as He is a Father, King, Friend, Comforter....

Nothing is the same as it once was. Nothing except the promises and the memories. I often wonder what he would think of all that has happened over the last year. To some things, he would be shocked and appalled. To other things he would simply be saddened that he can't fix them. But I hope that if he were to see me, and how I have managed through it all, he would be proud. He would rejoice over the strengthened relationships with my family. He would remind me of the choice that he made when he married me while other people have forgotten them.

I just opened up my box of Christmas decorations for the first time since the accident (everything was in storage last year while I recovered), and I was flooded with memories. Christmas does that. Every year, I still try to find the Christmas tree farm with the Winnie-the-Pooh house where we went as kids. I watch "A Christmas Story", "The Snowman", "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas", and occasionally the animated "Rudolph". Come to think of it, TV holds far too many memories of Christmas that it should! I remember how on our first Christmas together we made such a huge breakfast that we invited our landlords to come and help us eat it, and there were still leftovers and other baked goodies that I made! I had bought a Christmas tree that year from the back of some guy's truck in a Wal-Mart parking lot. It was the perfect size, but for reasons that may have been obvious had we checked (like the tree was sitting flush in the stand) the tree was as dry and as brittle as Dennis Rodman's hair. A fire hazard for sure. Dave chopped it up for tinder with his circular saw.

In the box of Christmas ornaments, there was the "First Christmas Together" ornament with our engagement picture that was given to us by my mother, a piece of that first Christmas tree with the year 2005 written on it, but most poignant was my nativity set. I hope to keep adding to it as the years go on because it isn't just memories that I am holding on to; I am holding on to the promise that my life is not yet fulfilled and to every other promise God has for my life. There is more yet to come.

Thank you all for being a part of past, present, and future chapters of my life.