I love listening to Pandora. One of the reasons is I love the 90s and 2000. I love music from the year 2000. It always sounds quite 90s like they didn’t release it on time but come on it has such a 90s sound. I love hearing songs from the 90s (and 2000) that I have never heard before because when I was the age these songs came out I was more preoccupied with singing John Jacob Schmidt at the top of my lungs and sing veggie tales songs. Anyways but my point is that the 90s were my favorite. I will explain to you why. It’s not only the decade I was born into (only 38 days into the decade mind you but still) but I love the power rangers, fanny packs, and my childhood (1990-2008 rip). Now I can’t explain to you what happened in the first 37 years of the decade because I was still a womb child but I can tell you I have some amazing moments from the 90s and my life. But I do have a few that stick out. Top 7. The first one is my all time favorite childhood memory but the others are in no particular order. I labeled the year.
1. When we lived in Sicily my mom and I went to this resort and it had slides that went into the ocean. So off the coast of northern Italy my favorite memory of my childhood exists. Which is interesting because when you are making a memory you don’t think oh today will be one of my favorite days. Especially when you’re like 7. But it was. You just do life and then look back and reflect and be like wow that was such a good day. (1997 I’m 97 % sure it was 1997)
2.When we lived in Kansas I wanted to have everyone in the neighborhood over to swim at my pool. But this wasn’t just any type of pool. It was a plastic pool with a slide. Haha. Who has a hotdog pool party and invites many neighbors as a 4 year old. This kiddo right here. And it was epic. And it wasn’t even my birthday. It was just a summer pool party in my driveway. On concrete with hotdogs. (1994)
3.Ok this memory is cheating because technically I was 19 but it will ALWAYS be remembered as one of my favorite days ever. My brother Matt and I drove to DC for the day to see the play Next To Normal. Shortly after that it made it to Broadways but with our student discounts we saw it for 15 bucks each. What a steal. And everybody knows how cheap I am. This day was ridiculously good. It was raining and it was January 2009 and we decided to go to the zoo. Because when we are together I swear we retract to being kids and we are like MOMS NOT HERE! NO MUSEUMS and NO RULES! So we do ridiculous things like go to the zoo in the rain or go to double feature movies (Boston 2010) because we never did that as kids. SO anyway I bought overpriced umbrellas (he insisted …I hate umbrellas) I’m with Hillary Duff on believe to…
“Let the rain fall down
And wake my dreams
Let it wash away
My sanity
'Cause I wanna feel the thunder
I wanna scream
Let the rain fall down
I'm coming clean, I'm coming clean”
Anyways so we went to the zoo and went to this cool macaroni place and saw Next to Normal the most amazing play I’ve ever seen and It was such an awesome day. I will never forget it. And technically I used the money my grandparents gave me to pay for some of the day so I guess you could consider it one of my favorite gifts ever. I’m glad it didn’t take me until I was like 36 to realize that relationships are more important than anything. (God , others) and that these moments are precious. We can’t get so caught up in the mundane of life to remember what the most important to us. Amen. (2009) So not 90s.
4.Fun in the Son. I went three summers in high school but the first year was the best. It was like a Christian conference camp thing in Georgia. And the first year I went was all my favorite people who were way older than me and about to go off to college and the guys dressed up as super heroes and it was awesome. I was still a child 15 so (2005)
5.I worked for TEAMeffort youth missions camp and during the end of my summer we went hiking and it started raining. I blogged about on August 7,2010 so you can read it for the full story. I’ve never felt that at peace before. Being in the presence of God is a place overflowing with peace. (2010)
6. Summer 2011 in Washington. the whole summer. Epic. The people. Gleanings, Frisbee, Trivia, Water Ballons, Climbing Trees, Ace hardware etc.Relationships with people. Seeing that no matter where you live we're really not all that different. we just pronounce things like crayons differently.
7. Chrysalis 2007 and rec Basketball 2007. Our team was stacked. And we won all the time. And we were neon yellow. And I still have the picture as proof of our awesomeness. And many games we were winning but more than 20 so we had the mercy rule. And that was always are goal.
There are more and the truth is if I wrote this an hour later or on a different day some of them would be different because I change my mind a lot. But I wrote it today starting at 12:38 so that’s the list of 12:38-1:39 January 10th, 2011. I write this to help remind myself that life is special when it’s filled with these moments. And the interesting thing about these moments is some of the moments that didn’t make the list. I’ve been to some fancy places but that’s not what this list was about. This list was about the people that I shared these moments with and the God I encountered and continue to encounter and during the time I didnt realize just how awesome what was going on. Thats what makes it special. You never know what you are creating when you are creating it. SO in 2012 lets have these type of moments. Lets celebrate life by embracing Joy and embracing the time we have on Earth. and lets explore, laugh, cry,seek justice, embrace hope, and have authentic conversations and relationships with people.Maybe we try to hard. maybe we put to much pressure on certain situation or days to be so awesome like prom or graduation. but those werent even close. because to me its about those ordinary days that turned out different then I expected. An ordinary day that had depth and spontaneity.
I hope all your dreams come true today.
Micah 6:8
-Mary D.
