Remembering

by Tim Knappenberger

I hadn’t been in our old New Philly neighborhood for some time. With our old homestead being right next door to that of our friends, I found myself looking next door and slipping away into memories. . .

My how that little blue spruce has grown. I remember trying not to mow over it when cutting the grass. It’s got to be at least 15 foot high now!

Looks like they’ve done a good job maintaining the deck. We grilled a lot of hamburgers and watched a lot of sunsets with the neighbors on that wood.

Well I’ll be!? The oversized plastic house numbers are still bolted by the front door. I wanted to make sure no one missed seeing our address. We were so proud of that tri-level. It was a real "step-up" house for us back then.

Man did we have a lot of sidewalk! I can still see the boys flying around the corner on their Big Wheels, the paper bag luminaries the neighborhood set out every Christmas, and me scrapping mountains of snow off of it. Seemed then as if that walk were hundreds of miles long instead of hundreds of feet.

Looking back over the shoulder of time, it would seem all of our experiences in New Philly were idyllic ones. They weren’t. Our three years there were also fraught with less than pleasant experiences:

• My becoming physically sick over the pressure and tension associated with the executive director’s position
• Beth’s lonliness fueled by my absorption at work and her few friends (save Mary Jane) in our new town
• Jealousy and distrust of us as newcomers in our small town church
• Beth flying up the interstate to Canton to be by the bedside of her dying grandmother, hoping she’d make it in time. (She did.)

As with most experiences in life, when we left New Philly, we took with us good and not-so-good memories. As I sat there recollecting in my neighbor’s garage filled with partiers and popcorn, I found myself amused at how the bad memories weren’t the ones that most came to mind. It was the pleasant ones. Psychology tells us that selective amnesia erring on the side of remembering the good and forgetting the bad is a healthy mental coping mechanism. Conversely, inverting the process leaves us bitter, remorseful, and patently miserable.

Thank heavens God operates from the same perspective. "For I will forgive their wickedness and remember their sin no more." (Jeremiah 31:34). Selective memory salved by the blood of Christ. Believers often have trouble accepting that God actually wants to forget their sin. Knowing what hanging on to painful memories does to me, I have trouble accepting why He wouldn’t. I know how miserable I make myself when I chew on the mistakes and offenses visited on me by others. They go on about their merry lives, leaving me stewing in my own juices, recounting how wronged or offended or slighted I was. Boy, is that ever a lot of fun! If we really believe that God went to all the trouble of putting on human flesh and dying for us just so He could restore us to relationship with Himself, why wouldn’t He practice divinely inspired amnesia? To do anything less would be to remember just how unworthy, ungrateful, and sin-racked we really are.

So go ahead and follow God’s lead. Reminisce from that skewed and fuzzy perspective time affords. Just be sure you allow yourself to focus on the pleasant memories you’ve stored away and take care to avoid dwelling on the painful ones. Granted, you won’t necessarily be accurate in your recollections, just happier. At least you’ll know God doesn’t mind. Because of Jesus, He does the very same thing.

I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.
(Lamentations 3:19-22 - NIV)

(Florence King (b. 1936), U.S. author. Reflections in a Jaundiced Eye)