For the longest time I thought I wanted to forget my childhood so I could move on. The rejection, the sense of I will never belong, the crippling feeling of insufficiency. For the past ten years I have been trying to forget.
But then one morning I realized I actually wanted to remember. In all my attempts to forget the bad, I found I was actually dwelling on it.
As I walked across the yard dragging the trash cans behind me, my beloved new scenery hit me in a new way. It gently awoke things in me that I needed to remember. After one month here, I still couldn’t get over the peace that flooded my soul from country living. I inhaled the deep smell of dirt and earth. The sweet smell of corn growing, of grass browning under the hot summer sun. I let the hot sticky air embrace me like a warm hug. The birds and bugs singing loudly in the trees around me sounded like a symphony. I looked across the road to the corn field that splayed before me, rolling gently. The trees in the distance loomed large, reminding me how small I really am.
There are different smells, feels, and sounds in the country. I forgot just how much I loved that different. I forgot just how embedded all of it was in me from my childhood. And in that moment I was struck by the fact that I didn’t need to forget my childhood to move on, I needed to remember it.
You see, I was remembering all the pain and the hurt. It was clouding my vision so intensely I forgot all the beauty. I forgot all the peace. I forgot all I was created to be, created to love, created to do.
No, the key to moving forward was not forgetting, it was moving backward so I could remember.
There is something we all lose in childhood as the confusion of this broken world presses in hard. Some of us lose more than others, but we all lose a bit of childhood wonder, beauty, and the knowledge of who we really are and what we value.
Sure, we hold onto the big things, but often the small beauties are forgotten. We think they arn’t important. However, it is the small things that make up the big. If we forget the small we wont remember why we do the big. We get confused and can bounce around trying to find that big thing.
In the short time that we have lived here, this house– this location, has reminded me of so many small things that made me who I am. It has brought back parts of my childhood I forgot in my pursuit to forget the hard things (spoiler alert I am not sure you really ever do). In all my forgetting I realized I actually forgot the good small things.
The small things like the little frogs I used to catch and play with. The tiny tiny ones, the size of a penny. The ones my daughters now catch. I forget how the mud felt between my fingers as I made mud-pies. The ones my daughters now make. I forgot how amazingly big the night sky is. The only thing distracting the stargazing is the fireflies dancing, the bugs chirping and the intense peacefulness the reverberates through your chest. The mid summer storms that you can sit out on the porch and watch roll in. The way the time ticks by– not in the amount of people you see but in the number of bruises you can count beginning to glimmer through the dirt on your shins. The way your faithful pet comes running to you after a long exploration to who knows where as he appears from the timber.
At the heart of it all it reminds me I was created for slow.
As God was intricately designing me in my mothers womb He formed me a specific way. In trying to forget the pain of the past, I forgot who God made me. But He is too loving to leave us in a place of forgetting. So He placed me somewhere to remember all the beauty. As children we are in the rawest form of who God made us. As we enter into adulthood we try to be someone else. Remembering the good of my childhood triggered memories of who I was truly made to be. Not only did it help me remember, it gave me a desire to unleash that person again. Confident in Christ working through me in that raw and real state. To believe in that again.
He made me thrive in a slow atmosphere. A dreamer thriving in the stillness of the countryside. Inspired by the outdoor peacefulness of country living. In my forgetting I decided dreaming was a waste of time and slow was a waste of productivity.
He made me artistic, with a love for words. An imagination that says I want to tell stories. In my forgetting I began to believe no one would want to listen.
He made me intentional, observant. But in my forgetting I became obsessive, overanalyzing everything to the point of squeezing all the beauty out of it….and those around me.
He gave me wonderful parents who raised me in a wonderful place…giving me a desire to raise my own kids that way. But in my forgetting I decided I needed to be more than I could be for my kids. Somehow in the trying to be more I found myself always not enough.
As the smells sounds and feels trigger all the good memories, all the things I know I was created to be I remember something else.
With all the remembering, the good and the bad, I see this thread that holds it all together. God provides us all the things we need. I don’t need to wind myself up in worry because God is always there, untangling and re-weaving something beautiful. Sometimes however, seeing takes faith because we can’t truly see until God chooses to open our eyes in his fullness of time.
The key to resting in our stories is not to forget the bad. It is the art of remembering the good and the bad with eyes that see how they are all weaved together in the formation of a masterpiece. Just as all the pieces of country living come together to form a beauty that breathes peace in me, all the pieces of my life come together to form a story that matters.
In the fullness of His time, He reveals to us understanding, readies us for our next task, and gives us hope to keep going. He doesn’t hand us everything all at once. No, part of walking through this life is having faith in the weaving process. Little by little we see Him more and more. Little by little we become the people He has created us for.
“I will send My fear before you, I will cause confusion among all the people to whom you come, and will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. 28 And I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite from before you. 29 I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the beasts of the field become too numerous for you. 30 Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased, and you inherit the land. 31 And I will set your [f]bounds from the Red Sea to the sea, Philistia, and from the desert to the [g]River. For I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you. 32 You shall make no [h]covenant with them, nor with their gods. 33 They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against Me. For if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.”
Exodus 23:27-33
