The other night, I curled up with a book in what my kids call “Mom’s Corner” of the couch. We bought our gray sectional last year because of that corner. Well, technically we bought it because our fifteen-year-old sofa was just about to fall apart. But, I sat in the corner of the floor display gray sectional at the furniture store and decided it was the one I wanted. At the time, I wasn’t sleeping through the night without chronic, debilitating pain, so once the couch was delivered, I spent many nights propped up on heating pads and ice packs in the corner. These days, it’s my movie-watching, book-reading, conversation-having corner. My kids know I would do anything for them and usually do, but that corner is mine.
It rained the other night, and after washing dishes and cleaning the kitchen, I put on some pajamas, and crawled under a blanket in the corner of the couch. In my lap, a dystopian novel about a medical facility in London that lets you wipe away your bad memories if you desire with very specific form of medically-induced amnesia that deletes the bad thing that has caused so much stress in your life as well as all the surrounding memories. I slipped on my reading glasses and read a few pages. I could hear rain hitting the roof, a gentle thrum that was comforting and punctuated by an occasional rumble of thunder. My kids were in their pajamas, playing a video game together. My husband sat next to me reading something on his tablet. I closed my book and just watched them all for a minute. “I love nights like this, when we’re all safe and warm and together,” I said to my husband. The sound of rain deepened. I can remember a Christmas when our world as a family was uncertain and tenuous. The threads that held us together threatened to snap beneath the weight of an upcoming courtroom trial. I had no certainty that any of us would be the same when it was over. Or together. It was a Christmas of tears.
I read a few pages more in my novel while the kids laughed. My husband read. The rain continued. This was what I wanted during the bad year. This was all I had wanted.
I tried to explain it to my son recently. “We had a hard time keeping you,” was all I could really make of a complicated adoption case. “And we so wanted to keep you.” For nearly a year, we wondered if it would all fall apart, each day bringing different news, different depositions, different legal hoops to jump through. We did everything we could but it was out of our hands. The more tightly we held him, the harder the leaving would be if it all went away. I held him with clenched fists anyway. It was the worst kind of waiting. It took a long time to recover when the bad year ended. I’d wept through every holiday and milestone, certain it would be both our first and our last together. Every moment of that Christmas was laced with the pain of potential loss. I could feel him leaving every morning that I woke up and reached for him. Would it be today?
When it was over, we had the ending we prayed for. Seven years have passed and I still feel strange about that Christmas. Our memories are steeped in what might have been. In the perseverance required to get through that year. I thought about it while I sat in my corner. While the rain pattered overhead. While my kids played together and my husband read next to me on the couch. Will I ever have a Christmas where I don’t think about it? Will I ever have a holiday when I don’t compare the joys of the day to the grief of that year? How can one year of pain color every memory afterwards?
While I was writing my book on Scripture memorization, I did some research on the way the brain makes memories. Neural pathways, sensory involvement, repetition. The brain likes to have a lot of paths to a memory in order to retrieve it. In a way, when we remember things, we are reliving the original experience.
Toying with the novel in my lap, I pondered the concept of memory removal. If memory deletion was an option, would I go back and remove the bad year? The insular pain of not knowing. The disease that cropped up because of the stress. The daily risk of loving someone you could lose. The prayers for a judge who didn’t know us, who we could be, who I knew we could be as a family. The amount of praying and pressing my face against my Bible every single day. The daily courage it took to rock the baby, feed the baby, love the baby, and maybe lose the baby. The way the Psalms became my journal entries. The way the dates on the pages of my Bible marked time for us. The way I struggled to feel sure long after it was over. The way I learned to put my trust in the Lord rather than man. If I could walk into a clinic, swallow a pill, think about the thing I want to forget and then feel it dissipate from the crevices of my mind—would I?
I wouldn’t. I want to always remember. Pain teaches us to be thankful. Grief keeps us near the cross. Remembering recounts God’s faithfulness. While there are events people experience that cause levels of trauma that must be counseled and handled delicately, what I’m talking about are those significant sequences of suffering that the Lord draws us through that change us, sanctify us. In a lot of ways, they make us who we are, even if we’d like to forget them at times. There’s an endurance that emerges from the sorrows we survived with our devotion to Jesus intact. And that’s how we survive the sorrow in the first place—holding fast to the One who is our survival in sorrows.
I don’t want to forget the ways He carried me. Remembering tightens my grip on trust. He’ll carry me through the next season of suffering.
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I made some notes in my planner today. Call the surgeon’s office tomorrow. Ask about housing. Order the supplies for my son’s surgery recovery. Ask about a walker. Ask about blood typing. I took a deep breath and remembered what I’d asked the pastors to pray for during corporate prayer at church: “Pray that we will entrust our son to the Lord.” Haven’t I prayed that prayer a thousand times for both of the children I call mine? I want to be on the other side of this next hard thing. I just want to get through it. But I know that in living it God will carry us. I’ll journal every day as usual because later, I will want to remember all the ways He was faithful.
I want to remember it all. It rained all night long the other night. I watched my family in my living room. A candle flickered on the coffee table. I sank back into my corner. Opened the book. Listened to the rain. Remembered.
I won’t forget the rain that night.
The Lord always takes care of us.
I don’t want to forget the ways He carried me. Remembering tightens my grip on trust. He’ll carry me through the next season of suffering. Share on X
Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash
Glenna Marshall is married to her pastor, William, and lives in rural Southeast Missouri where she tries and fails to keep up with her two energetic sons. She is the author of The Promise is His Presence (P&R) and Everyday Faithfulness (Crossway), and Memorizing Scripture (Moody). Connect with her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Chris Veteto says
This is a really hard memory we shared as a family and as I prayed and cried and pled with God to please let us keep our beautiful little grandson, my heart was breaking into pieces over my daughter’s suffering. Yet I know that the time when the pain was the worst was the time I walked more closely with my Lord than I had in many many years.
I’m so grateful God’s gracious will was for that little boy to have our family as his forever family, and I’m still amazed at the beauty God wrought through that fiery trial —- in my life, in your life and in the lives of those who are encouraged by your words.
“Yet He knows the way I have taken; when He has tested me, I will emerge as pure gold.” Job 23:11