Memories, Messages, and Sentimental Blessings (by guest Jan White)

I stared at our refrigerator door trying to decide what to do. I wasn’t hungry, so I wasn’t trying to decide what to eat. The cluttered door needed cleaning.

Practically the entire door, except for the handle, was covered by memories and messages. I knew I had to do something about all that stuff. Newspaper clippings, cartoons, school photos, and drawings hugged the door, held in their places by magnets of all shapes and sizes.

I sometimes feel the clutter around my house grows while we are sleeping or working! At times, frustration with boxes and piles of stuff makes me determined to clean it up. I wonder if I could make it seem fun by planning a “throwing away party.” But then, I would actually have to part with stuff. 

One by one, I lifted each magnet off the refrigerator door, releasing the paper or picture holding it in place. My life passed before my eyes as I sorted through the hodgepodge spread out on the kitchen table. I couldn’t remember when I’d seen the refrigerator door totally blank. Windex and a paper towel shined it right up.

Then came decision time. What goes and what stays? My 40-year-old daughter’s first-grade Sunday School drawing had to stay in the upper right-hand corner of the freezer door. It’s been a sentimental favorite because it’s a construction paper tracing of her small hand. But also because of a little bow made of yarn, glued on her tiny index finger and the crayon reminder, “Don’t forget to pray” – a reminder I’ve needed countless times through the years.

Magnets on the opposite corners of the drawing had to stay – one says, “Prayer List,” and the other, an inverted heart, with the message, “Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.” Just under my daughter’s drawing, I placed a little square magnet painted with flowers and a picket fence that reads, “Enter His gates with thanksgiving.”

Beside that magnet, there’s another rectangular one with our daughter, her name, its meaning, and the verse, “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in Him, and I am helped; therefore my heart greatly rejoiced, and with my song will I praise Him” (Psalm 28:7). 

A larger square magnet featured a stick person drawn with a thumbprint for a body and affirming words, “You are thumbody in Him!” It fits in the upper right-hand corner of the lower door just under a magnet depicting a family of bears around a table praying, “God is great, God is good. Lettuce thank Him for our food. By this ham we are fed, give us, Lord, our raisin bread. Amen.”

I just couldn’t toss the Family Circle cartoon of a little girl singing, “I come from Alabama with a band-aid on my knee.” Under “Prayer List,” I lined up the photos of missionaries and their families that our family supports, along with prayer reminders from ministries like Sav-A-Life.

The pile of things I retired from the refrigerator door went into a file folder. Now I have to figure out where to place the sentimental items, such as coloring sheets specially presented to Grandma Jan and Grampa Greg, along with school photos. Our two granddaughters share their artwork with us and other family members.

What I had dreaded doing turned out to be a trip down memory lane. The dozens of magnets reminded me of messages I didn’t take the time to read, even though I “saw” them every day. These small sermons preached powerful truths.

Maybe next week I’ll sort through the stuff on the other side of the refrigerator!