So I've been asked some tough questions in my life. In fact, my four year old daughter posed one the other night asking, "Daddy, where do unicorns come from?" Maybe it was because I was exhausted or didn't thoroughly know how to articulate my belief that unicorns are a figment of creative imagination, nevertheless, I chose to divert her attention to a delicious lemonade flavored Popsicle instead of answer her question. Do you ever find yourself doing the same? Glazing over the hard, honest truth to avoid the chance of a difficult and lengthy conversation? Finding innovative ways to avoid a subject that you may not have the answer to? You are not the only one!
One of the toughest questions that I get these days is, "How's your brother doing?"... To be honest, each and every time I hear these words it is as if I am transported from a paradigm of comfort to an abyss of confusion. Caught off guard like a deer in headlights! Why? Truthfully, it has been entirely too complex to articulate and most unfortunately I don't have any answers. Simply said, it is difficult to answer questions when a world that holds so much beauty can be polarized by uncensored evil.
It’s been about 54 days since I last wrote on these circumstances and sometimes life can move forward as if it is running from a blaze. We’ve had the privilege to celebrate our precious Emma Grace’s fourth birthday, we kicked off the summer at the beach with some of our closest friends, I’ve had the honor to pay homage to some incredible Proverbs 31 moms, and I have been fortunate enough to whisk my beautiful bride off to an exotic getaway (Daytona Beach) for our five year anniversary. Our days have been filled with overwhelming memories. Some very much like the above mentioned and some that I’d be less than enthusiastic telling you about. I’ve found that memories are, for the most part, inevitable. Regardless of our intentionality, we are bound to create a wake in this world that produces memories for someone to bear. Whether you are a detailed analytical planner or an improvisational whirl-wind, you leave a mark. And it’s for this very reason we should be constantly aware of our surroundings and the humanity within them. But that isn’t our nature.
Sometimes we mess up and leave a mark that stains deep. Sometimes we create a memory we wish we did not have to revisit. Sometimes we are subjected to things that we should never have to endure. This reminds me of a scary moment from the other day. Emma Grace, our four year old daughter, made the decision to jump rope on our couch with one of my hardly used exercise bands. In her efforts to become an acrobatic gymnast, calamity made an appearance to the show! Emma Grace lost her balance in mid-air and the momentum she had produced jolted her chin-first onto the floor. She jumped up with tears in her eyes and a wound great enough to send us out to get her some stitches. None of us will ever forget that moment. And how could we? We have the marks to remind us of what had happened; one on her chin and another on the carpet. You can’t just pretend like they aren’t there. It’s a memory engraved in our minds forever. It would even be fair to say that it is one that we’d like to take back or would rather that it had never happened at all. But we are bound to the circumstances and consequences that play out in this life. This happens not only as a result of our actions, but more commonly through the actions of others. And we remember!
So how do you forget unpleasant memories and selectively revisit the pleasurable ones? Suppression? Denial? Ignorance? Revenge? None of these choices seem reasonable or healthy. But some individuals make that choice. Some circumstances, stains if you will, go so deep that it may seem that the only way to make new and move on is to exchange what has been destroyed or to just throw something over it to hide the mark. Fake it till you make it! Sometimes we feel justified to hold on to the memory of what has been done against us and use it as a means of punishment. But these are failed formulas. Why? Because we remember!
You see when we say we forget about it, for the most part, we are like the guy that sits in a dunk tank while teasing the crowd… we eventually get hit and we are going down! When we are honest and embrace what has been done to us and what we have done, we become holistically and thoroughly free. But many chose to dress up the elephant in the room and tell people it's a coffee table. Many of us forget to remember! See I am one that tends to think forgiving is not forgetting. In fact, it takes remembering to forgive and to be forgiven. I love this quote by Lewis Smedes:
"Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future."
So maybe today is a day in which it is inevitable to remember what has happened and quite possibly what is to come. Maybe the found memories have passed and you are left vulnerable to focus on the harm that has been done to you. Maybe today is a day in which you are struggling with forgiveness or holding onto unforgiveness. Maybe something is going on behind the scenes and it is making it difficult for you to do what Paul says in Philippians:
“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”
Can I tell you something? Here it comes…. I’ve found that the more harmful the situation, the more painful the experience, the more messed up things seem, the more unforgettable the memory; greater is the hope for the future! These memories are not to be taken for granted nor disposed of by hiding it under a cerebral rug! No they very well could be the measure of our ability to forgive and to be forgiven.
So whether today is a day that you get to welcome your first born child or bury one unexpectedly, there is hope! Whether you parasail for the first time in the Bahamas or you watch your marriage sail through divorce, there is hope! And it comes to those that remember….
You see things may be too complex to articulate and you may not have the answers. But we don’t need to be hindered or glaze over the truth. So what I want to say to those of you who would say, ‘I can’t do it, you don’t know my circumstances, you don’t know the situation I’ve been in,’ I want to say, ‘no, you can’t,’ there are some things that are not humanly possible, but if you let the grace of God get a hold of your life, you can do it. You can do anything…
Because it has nothing to do with how much you’ve done right and how much you’ve done wrong. It has everything to do with what He has done. He paid a debt He did not owe; we owed the debt we could not pay. That is a memory that I chose not to forget… forgive and be forgiven!
So make every effort to make memories that are pure, lovely, and admirable… they will be remembered!
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