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I don’t just like a good book. I’m obsessed with one. If I find one I decide is worth being obsessed over, everyone hears about it. “Love Does�� by Bob Goff is my latest gem. Last week was pretty busy, but I really wanted to finish it right away, so I made it a priority to take it everywhere I went. I read it in the car, in the doctor’s office, at coffee shops, in the woods�� It was like a never-ending meal that I just kept devouring. Not that it’s a very long book. But each chapter was so sweet that I wanted to take my time to savor it.

In one of the final chapters of “Love Does��, Bob tells the story of how his son Adam buys a junky old sailboat off Craigslist and names it “The Story��. Bob, touched by the way his son sees new adventure and untold stories in a beat-up hunk of fiberglass, shares the basis of a project he’s been working on for years. He’s in the process of writing down all his memories. Every bee sting and childhood crush and tiny important episode of his life. This way, when he is old and near death, he can look back over the big and little moments and see Christ through it all. He asks Adam if he’d like to join in on the project and his son replies that while he loves the idea, he’s too busy actually making the memories to write them down just yet. Which causes me to wonder��

Am I making memories, or using all my time and energy to write them down?

There are two sides to who I am. I’m a nineteen year old girl. I sometimes wear my hair in pigtails and I have square-shaped photographs taped all over my walls. I get excited when a boy wants to hold my hand and I eat too much popcorn in movie theaters–sometimes to the point of feeling sick. I’m afraid of rollercoasters because I like my stomach to remain in my stomach and not my throat. I like the way my ears pop in an airplane. I like to hold my nose and let out big breaths to hear them pop again. It reminds me that I’m moving. I’m flying and sinking and the air is cradling my plane in the arms of the wind. It’s amazing to be a nineteen year old girl with curly hair and three freckles under her right eye. And I don’t think I ever take that for granted.

But I’m also a writer. I’m a storyteller. It’s hard for me to feel something and not write about it. My heart and my hand are connected that way. I babble on the phone and make obnoxiously long Instagram captions and have about sixty notes on my phone of quotes + memories + stories people have given me. I love the idea of turning off my phone and leaving my camera at home and really living in a moment. But once that moment is gone, words are my favorite way to re-live it.

I don’t want to wait until I’m old to look back on my life and record all the memories. I know there will be things I’ll inevitably forget. Jelly fish stings on my ankles in the middle of an August beach day. Cranberry relish on the stovetop. Holding hands under the table. Clouds that look like islands. Places that smell like home.

I appreciate Adam’s sentiment. I do want to live in the moment. I want to let these memories hit me as they unfold. They can slap me in the face and soak into my bones and kiss me on the mouth. Life is more than welcome to collide with me. But I’m still going to take notes on the places of contact.

It will be amazing, one day, to look back and read about these moments through words that were raw and new when they were written. My memories shouldn’t be softened with the filter of nostalgia. They should be as vibrant and cutting as the day they were formed. By writing about my life as it happens, I’m quick-freezing it forever. The tone of my voice. The snark of my humor. The heat of my embarrassment. These are nuances too great to be drawn out of the filing cabinet of an aging memory five decades from now.

How incredible are these stories we are in. The ones that encapsulate your today and your yesterday and your tomorrow. When we look around and see the heat and the sizzle and the joy, our lives become a collection of individualized, exquisite chapters in a story that’s far from over. The details you remember now are important. The way it feels to be young and excited and scared. That’s something that will fade and change as you get older. And while life will continue to grow sweeter, it will also twist and change. You’ll make new memories and store up more scenes and characters. By the time you’re old it may all seem a blur. A soft, colorful blur perhaps. But you’ll lose the detail.

I think it’s our responsibility to record these stories as they unfold. Christ is holding infinite galaxies and tugging at the sun and flipping the pages in your book. In your tiny corner of this vast existence, He is still writing words into your life. But unless you copy them down for yourself, how will you remember every detail?

Our favorite books are usually the ones we’ve read the most. For me, a random one is Ella Enchanted. I must have read it twenty times while I was in middle school. I have sections memorized: Dialog I thought was funny. Letters Ella wrote to Char. The ending, especially, is still ingrained in my mind. I know every little detail. Blood on her tongue�� Opening the door and shouting into the street�� Pulling her prince off the floor for a kiss�� Why? Because I read it over and over again. The scenes were vivid and I re-lived them with Ella dozens of times.

That’s how I want my life to feel someday. I don’t want it to stick like a good but long forgotten novel I read in seventh grade that I enjoyed but failed to ever pick up again. Those vague plot twists and lapses in memory won’t do for me.

This life is going to be better than a favorite book. I’ll record it as it happens, with every detail and bloody lip and shout into the street and dusty kiss exactly where it belongs. And I’ll read it. These stories won’t sit still in folders on my computer or sheets in my old journals. They’ll be read and shared and looked back upon and laughed over with friends. And one day, when I’m old, I won’t have to look back and think about the long and sweet and low days.

Because I’ll have hard, black and white evidence of God’s grace through them all.

-Rachel

{Pictures taken on disposable cameras in Portland this summer}

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