So I Won't Forget...January 2024

3 things I want to remember from the past month

I love a favorite things list. I’m a sucker for ordering some random item from an Amazon affiliate link just out of curiosity (i.e. the 24k gold eye patches I’m currently wearing as I type this). I’ve read all the must-have lists and more than once I’ve followed the rabbit hole all the way to the bottom. When I first started writing, I wondered if I ought to source some of my own favorite items for people, but the realities are 1) I’m not that cool 2) nobody really needs another list that would most certainly just be me parroting what I got from someone else and 3) what I really want to preserve and share is the stuff that stirs my hope, the stuff that reminds me of God’s goodness, His kindness and care for me, His work in my life. These things are worthy of a list.

And so faithful reader and early adopter of We Have This Hope, I submit to you the very first So I Won’t Forget essay where I’ll capture the things I want to treasure away and ponder in my heart like all mothers, women, and people have done since the beginning of time whether they realized they were doing it or not. This is a platform about the art of remembering after all, a place to preach and practice that remembering God’s work in our lives anchors us in seasons and experiences when the space between us and God feels more like a chasm than a thin place. When we practice remembering, we’re also acknowledging the implicit problem that necessitates it in the first place: forgetting. We remember because we forget. In a sermon buried deep in his repertoire, Jon Tyson of Church of the City New York once said: “The enemy doesn’t need you to deny God. He needs you to forget Him.”

And so when I remember, I’m actually fighting to not forget. I’m taking on a posture of defiance toward my own fading memory, my aging brain, and this world’s tendency to steal my attention from the things that actually matter.

Photo by Jordan McQueen on Unsplash

It’s the reason we take pictures, isn’t it? Last night I was looking through old videos of my youngest daughter Cece, marveling at how small she seemed and how full her darling cheeks were when we first moved into our current house. What struck me was how everything was so familiar and yet so distant. I had lived these experiences, captured them on my phone, all of them less than 3 years ago, but I had simply forgotten. Somewhere in the midst of living my ordinary life with her, I’d forgotten those precious cheeks. The same ones I kiss every night when I put her to bed. When Cece wakes up in the morning, you never really know which version of her is going to greet you. It’s wise to tread lightly. This morning when she quietly sauntered into the living room where I was already drinking coffee, rather than brace myself for her morning grumpiness or feel slightly frustrated that my alone time was over, I noticed her little red cheeks. The ones still a little squished from her pillow and slightly hidden by her curly blonde bedhead and I thanked God for the gift of this wild and wonderful daughter who fills my life with energy and beauty.

So I won’t forget #1…..Cece’s cheeks.

It’s been over 200 hundred days since we slept in our home. But who’s counting, right? Not me, Siri actually did that math for me. Anyway, if you’re new around here the short version is a tree fell on our home during a somehow classic, somehow ridiculous storm in Oklahoma last June. We’ve been living in transition since that time while our house is being repaired and the reality is the entire process has been….fine. It’s not been fun. It’s also not the end of the world. We have perspective most days and we’ve mostly been so entrenched in the regular stuff of life with three kids that we don't have a lot of space to be too dismayed.

Except for this week.

Allow me to use the most apropos metaphor ever in this situation, but this week turned out to be a bit of a perfect storm in terms of our weariness colliding with the tangle of insurance, contractors, financial calculations that make you rethink how many times you visited Starbucks last year, and the general gloominess of a January sky. My husband who is characteristically even keel about everything, calm on the surface always, was starting to show his stress and we’ve loved each other long enough for me to know that means it’s about to boil over into heart palpitations.

We are excellent project partners. Over the years of learning ourselves and learning each other, we’ve figured out who does what best and we’re good at staying in our lanes. Sometimes though, there are times when one of us needs to cross the center line to keep the other one from curb-checking. That happened this week. Frankly it happened on both sides. I needed to cool off. He needed someone else to speak into the bigger picture of spreadsheets and negotiations. The details of it don’t really matter for the sake of this essay and I pray they won’t matter in a few months when we’re back in our beautifully remodeled home laughing about how complicated this past year has been. What is worth remembering is the joy of co-laboring with my spouse after nearly 14 years of being together and really knowing each other. He knows when I’m about to boil over in anger and say something that won’t be helpful. I know when his often invisible stress is about to show itself in the form of a terrible nights’ sleep and indigestion. I realize this sense of knowing each other and working together well isn’t always the experience of two married people and so I say it here not to boast, but with humility and gratitude. This partnership is a gift in my life, evidence of God’s good work in me and I don’t want to miss it in the weeds of ordering another light fixture.

So I won’t forget #2…project managing with Dustin on all the hard and good things.

Last month I was listening to the Raising Boys and Girls podcast (which I whole-heartedly recommend) and they were talking about the elementary years, a stage we’re sort of on the front end of with two kindergartners and a third grader. One of the delightful things that I took away from this episode was the way they talked about boys. Historically I haven’t resonated with much material out there on raising boys because I find it’s often about their physicality, their aggression, and helping them tap into healthy emotional expression. But our Avett doesn’t need anyone telling him to stop jumping off the couch headfirst because he’s too busy telling his sisters to stop doing that. He’s also too busy telling me calmly that the way I said something hurt his feelings and made him feel sad and then asking me for a hug. Gosh, I love this kid. Anyway, in this particular episode David Thomas talked about boys ages 5-8 being the lover and the sheriff of their families. Finally, I thought. Avett is 100% these things in our home right now. He brings the snuggles. He brings the latest information on who has done something they weren’t supposed to do…including his parents. The episode ended with a very simple comment on this age/stage for boys: “There is nothing better on the planet than a 5 year old boy.”

There are plenty of times when I feel prickly about my kids, their personalities brushing up against mine, still forming and changing while simultaneously needing a snack. And while I do think it’s worth remembering the challenges in the trenches of parenting, I also think it’s sometimes harder work to remember the reality set before us in the lives of the people we’ve been given to raise - there is nothing better on the planet. I needed this episode to reframe my thinking that day, to remind me that my kids are awesome and I love being their mom. Having grown up in girl-world, I also needed it to remind me that having a son still feels like a bonus gift from God.

So I won’t forget #3…five year old boys are a total delight.

And so I wonder if you’ll join me in this grand project of not-forgetting each month. What are the things in your own life that passed by you so quickly you had better snag them or they’ll be gone like the weather? What captured your attention, lingered in your thoughts, or made you take a picture?

Quick, document them before you forget! :) Or better yet, leave a comment with your answers. I’d love to hear from you. Think of it as your first small step in remembering.