So I Won't Forget...November 2024

3 stories to remember from the past month

I just set a timer for twenty minutes.

Now I’ve just given you a little insight into the way my brain works. Sometimes I set timers when I need to focus. I’m fairly certain it was an idea I latched onto from someone else or perhaps that’s just what I say to look slightly less neurotic. Either way I’ve got eighteen minutes to start writing something so let’s get going.

If I’m being honest, I don’t feel the same energy boost that I normally do when I sit down to collect my thoughts for So I Won’t Forget. The only thing I can put my finger on is the fullness of December looming largely in the back of my mind and the front of my calendar. I’ve done this exercise now for ten months so I know it will bear fruit in me—gratitude, wonder, joy, and a reorienting toward the rhythms of the Kingdom that seem weaker, but are actually stronger. So alas, I’m sitting down to write even though I’d prefer to pop in my headphones while doing something more measurably productive like vacuum the stairs.

This will surely take longer than twenty minutes.

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

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A few years ago we decided to be puzzle people and I feel nerdy just saying that. In my mind doing puzzles together in our late thirties seems like something that a twenty-four year old version of me would have scoffed at—I’ll never do that says little Emily to herself as she heads out to dinner around 8PM. Fast forward to this month and I’m wearing sweatpants at 8PM huddled around a thousand-piece puzzle with my turmeric and ginger tea..you know…for digestive health.

Our oldest selected the puzzle most certainly for its colorful central image that spelled out the words “Be Kind” and not for the huge swaths of blank white space that wrapped around the entirety of it. In my mind we were going to conquer this puzzle in an afternoon. We cleared the perfect space and even measured the little table to make sure it was wide enough. When the day wrapped up and we hadn’t even located all four corners, I probably should have conceded, but we were all so cute (and naive) gathered around the table that I let four whole days chip away before I decided to quit.

The table wasn’t actually wide enough. Kids kept dropping tiny pieces on the floor for the dog to sniff. Progress was painstakingly slow and I don’t thrive at that kind of pace. But glory be, I married a man who does and I started noticing Dustin quietly hovering around the table as the rest of us phoned it in for other loves like emptying the dishwasher or tackling each other on the sofa. Dustin spent another two days working on the white spaces and at the end of the last night he held out his hand to give me the final piece. Here you go, you finish it.

I thought about this gesture afterward because the whole thing had played out in such an unsurprising and endearing way. I got frustrated and quit about two thirds in. Dustin quietly persisted, brought us all to the finish line, and then handed me the trophy.

What a guy.

I’m grateful for our differences and for the years we’ve cultivated the art of really seeing each other. As our kids are growing into themselves, I see glimmers of their father in each of them—one who knows all kinds of facts, one who isn’t ruffled by Lego sets above his age, and one who is a friend to many. They bear traces of their mother too, but for today’s remembering I’ll capture just their Dad at the puzzle table of life doing what he does best and then handing us the best part.

So I Won’t Forget #1…Puzzles for Life

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is hands down my favorite Christmas story of all time. There’s really no book that makes the nativity scene more relatable and no book that gives us more permission to giggle at the church ladies we once knew as children. I started reading it aloud to our oldest a few years ago and the twins are finally old enough to really soak it in. Like any good mother I forbad them from seeing the movie until we had read the book so we powered through over Thanksgiving break and have already finished.

Or rather they finished it because I can’t read the ending without crying over Imogene Herdman as Mary. The first time I read this section I had my arm around my four year old with two sleeping infants in the next room. I was raw and vulnerable and so very tired. When Imogene portrayed Mary as protective, tearful, filled with wonder, and yet totally out of her depth, I thought there’s a version of Mary I can get on board with.

“But as far as I'm concerned, Mary is always going to look a lot like Imogene Herdman—sort of nervous and bewildered, but ready to clobber anyone who laid a hand on her baby.” (The Best Christmas Pageant Ever)

In the re-reading years that followed, I learned more about refugees displaced from Afghanistan and moving to my city. My parents do life with one refugee family regularly—taking them to appointments, spending weekly time in their home, feasting when they celebrate, and grieving when they experience all the pains that come from being utterly displaced. While I’m a degree or so removed from their day to day, I’ve grown to love this family. I’ve grappled with my inability to actually empathize with their experience. And yet in reading this sweet story to my kids, I was reminded that Mary and Joseph could empathize. They knew displacement. They knew what it feels like to abandon home. They knew what it was like to run for their lives.

“They looked like the people you see on the six o’clock news—refugees, sent to wait in some strange ugly place, with all their boxes and sacks around them. It suddenly occurred to me that this was just the way it must have been for the real Holy Family, stuck away in a barn by people who didn’t much care what happened to them. They couldn’t have been very neat and tidy either, but more like this Mary and Joseph.” (The Best Christmas Pageant Ever)

So I guess what I really want to remember is how much I cherish this book and how a simple story can prove that delight and depth are not mutually exclusive. I never want to stop crying at the end and I’m praying that each year my kids will wonder more and more why I do.

So I Won’t Forget #2…The Best Christmas Tears Ever

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

The following is a collection of smaller moments rather than a longer reflection. I’m sharing my #3 in this format because I wonder if you might be hesitant to start your own So I Won’t Forget. Maybe writing isn’t your jam or you feel limited by time. This is an example of what I keep on my phone. Little snapshots, pun intended even, of what catches my attention or comes back to me when the evening slows down. I know you can do it too. Consider this the nudge.

• I’m taking a social media break until after the new year and I’ve really enjoyed it. My phone is boring right now and I’ve loved marking the season with some space.

• Hindsight is showing me that last year was a blur. We decorated our home extra early this month and all the delight I feel about it proves that I was not fully engaged last year while stuck at a rental house waiting to come home. There’s just an extra measure of joy radiating from our home as we blare Behold the Lamb of God and I secretly battle with the kids to keep the tree lights on the white setting rather than the multi-colored.

• Ella and I helped my Mom make the Thanksgiving dressing recipe that my grandmother always made. We giggled about how this recipe had more ingredients than any of us had ever seen her use. She was always more of a Fancy Grandma than a Cooking Grandma which frankly is goals for me.

• I searched everywhere for a missing spoon and even lectured my entire family on the importance of putting things back after using them only to find said spoon on the kitchen island of my dear friend across the street. How did the spoon get there? Who knows? It’s a spoon mystery.

• We have a traditional wood-burning fireplace and I’m in love. It has caused me to want to research why we enjoy sitting by fires. What is the history of fireplaces? What impact does a modern shift away from fireplaces have on families? Are there any fireplace historians out there? If so, please message me immediately.

So I Won’t Forget #3…A List of Honorable Mentions for November

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Next week I’ll be releasing my conversation with

Kendall Vanderslice

via the podcast and I can’t wait for this to be in your ears! With the end of the year approaching, I’ll also be signing off to chase my kids and make sure I don’t forget whatever snack I signed up to bring to all their parties.

If this work has been meaningful to you, would you consider upgrading to a paid subscription? Or even more, sharing with friends with a touch of intentionality? This newsletter has grown tremendously since I started almost a year ago, but my hope is that it will continue to expand as I lean into more writing in 2025. I’ll be praying and thinking about all these things over the break. Dear reader and friend, you are a true gift to me!