The Glass Jar : A Journey through our Moments

Last March I wrote a post titled The Glass Jar. The concept is all over Pinterest and Facebook. Some refer to it as the happiness jar. The first time around I failed miserably. I had intended to make use of the jar and it turned out over the course of a year I only found six things to drop in. Of coarse there was more than six things to be happy about. In 2014 I made more of an effort with the jar. This time around I kept it in my bedroom instead of on a shelf in the kitchen. It sat right on my bureau where I was forced to look at it every day.

New Years Day we decided to open up our jar and take a journey through the happy moments we had collected through the year. I am proud to say that I had a nice pile to dump out. Champagne was poured and Chase was leaning on the ottoman eager for me to read our "moments". We recorded things from Wesley getting his first tooth to Chase playing soccer. There was how we went strawberry picking, took a family vacation to Old Orchard Beach, and how mama did her first Half Marathon. The things I wrote down were happy. Some were funny. They were "firsts". They were moments. Some big, others small. Each one having a special meaning to us as a family.

I felt emotional reading some of them. I could feel tears burning in my eyes as I read how Chase made Wesley belly laugh as I listened from another room. It's those moments that you will never get back. The fleeting feelings that grab a hold of your heart and squeeze. Squeezing so tight that you have to take a moment to breathe. Suddenly you are there again, in that moment.

The glass jar had become more sacred to me than I ever intended it to be. We even talked about other moments through the year that were fun or memorable that we forgot to put in the jar. I was able to jot them down on paper and add those to our pile. Something so simple became a powerful new tradition for our family. In my first post about the glass jar I wrote: "I want to be sure to celebrate these moments and look back on them with a smile and a full heart". This is exactly what we did on New Years Day while reading through the contents of the glass jar. We smiled, we laughed, and my heart felt full of love and happiness.

It all is much more than the glass jar. I know that life moves quickly. I wish I could freeze time or even just slow it down to relish every memory with my boys. I don't want to forget the sound of their laughter, the feel of their hands grabbing at me, or the embrace of their hugs. Moments rush by leaving their impressions on everything around us. It rains, it snows and  the sun comes out again. We love, we cry, we laugh and we grow. Time passes. We mistakenly forget about those events and people that brought us to where we are. I like that we can be reminded in this simple way. Years from now I will be able to look back on these notes and be brought back to each of these moments. The glass jar holds pieces of our hearts; paper treasures to look back on.