Last week I drove myself to Vernal, a trip of three hours one way, to tend my grandbabies for a couple of days so their parents could attend a seminar. On the way home on Saturday afternoon, I found myself singing. It was amazing to me how one song led to another, and they really ran the gamut, from "Lead, Kindly Light" to old Beatles ballads like "I Will" and "In My Life." What really surprised me, though, was when the chain of songs led me clear back to high school, to the music we had performed in concert choir in 1973. It has been years, maybe decades, since I sang those songs. And yet I found I could remember them with almost astonishing clarity.

What's more, every song connected to some other kind of memory. Sometimes I could envision a particular setting in which I had sung the song. Sometimes it was just a more abstract feeling. Either way, those memory links took me back into different eras in my life and recovered events I hadn't thought about for a long, long time.

I can't tell you how encouraging that was to me. I have read that our memories really are all stored in our brains somewhere, even when it seems we have no access to them. The books I've read, the people I've known, the experiences I've treasured - they're all still in there somewhere. It may be the next life before I can recall them all, but in the meantime I love the feeling that it's WORTH "inputting" good things into my brain, things the Spirit can bring to my remembrance when I need them the most.