What's in your box?

So here I am driving home on the interstate, tears streaming down my face as I listen to a lady on "This American Life" talk about her experience with her son. You see, her husband has a very degenerate form of dementia and their ten year-old son is having a hard time dealing with the loss. Because he is so young, the son does not have any memories of his Dad prior to the disease. So Mom got a box, an old tin box that belonged to her husband and filled it up with tidbits, little items such as a pocket knife, photos, a passport, an old work ID card, lots of small "throw-aways" that each tell a little story about her husband. She brings the box out and shares these memories with her son on a regular basis. He asks questions and begins to form a picture of his dad, before the illness stole his humor, his personality, and his affection. She described a situation with her son that really made me cry. He needed an extra $10 to buy some action figures, and they decided to use an old jar full of coins that Dad use to fill with coins from his pocket. After cashing in the coins and buying his toys, the son approaches his mom with tears and grief, realizing that those coins belonged to his DAD. And they are no longer in the house, coins he had touched and deposited in the jar. That made me cry. And it also made me think...

...about that tin box. I can picture my life memories in a tin box. Each little "throw-away" in my tin box is a little piece of my life, and the pieces combine to form a mosaic - my life. Do you remember seeing a mosaic where each little piece is a picture of someone? You stand far away from the mosaic and it's really a portrait of someone's face. But each little piece has a portrait all its own. That's it. That's my life. Everyone who has ever come in contact with me has gone away with a little portrait of who I am. My husband has a different picture. My mother, my father, my brother, my sister-in-law, my brothers-in-law, my mother-in-law, my colleagues past and present, friends from each phase and walk of life... I can go on. If each of these people had a little memory of me and they put in a box, what kind of portrait would I see? A smiling Joy? A compassionate Joy? A selfish Joy? A sad Joy? A Christ-like Joy?

That story really had an impact on me. My prayer is that as you walk away from the mosaic that makes up my life and look at the big picture, you don't see my portrait, but that of Jesus. Wow, there's a lot to be done on this work of art.

So, what's in your box?