Dear Friends,
I don’t usually do this but I received so many responses from folks about this past Wednesday’s ‘from the rev’ regarding my journey with my father’s final days and how it brought back many of your own memories. I was especially amazed at how many of our fathers used ‘Old Spice’ after shave lotion!
Every morning I receive an email blog with a quote from one of my favorite authors, Frederick Buechner (pronounced ‘beek-ner’). Today’s quote about memory seemed appropriate after what I shared this past Wednesday and thought it might be meaningful to you:
I am inclined to believe that God’s chief purpose in giving us memory is to enable us to go back in time so that if we didn’t play those roles right the first time round, we can still have another go at it now. We cannot undo our old mistakes or their consequences any more than we can erase old wounds that we have both suffered and inflicted, but through the power that memory gives us of thinking, feeling, imagining our way back through time we can at long last finally finish with the past in the sense of removing its power to hurt us and other people and to stunt our growth as human beings.
The sad things that happened long ago will always remain part of who we are just as the glad and gracious things will too, but instead of being a burden of guilt, recrimination, and regret that make us constantly stumble as we go, even the saddest things can become, once we have made peace with them, a source of wisdom and strength for the journey that still lies ahead. It is through memory that we are able to reclaim much of our lives that we have long since written off by finding that in everything that has happened to us over the years God was offering us possibilities of new life and healing which, though we may have missed them at the time, we can still choose and be brought to life by and healed by all these years later.
– Originally published in Telling Secrets
I hope you have a wonderful day. Remember we’re making memories every day…let’s make them good ones!
You are loved,
Wayne