Memory

I try to retrieve the memory like scrambling for a foothold. It’s not often I’m the one to forget — maybe it’s from constant musing, maybe it’s from journaling, but I hold many many memories within my grasp, ready when needed. I’m surprised that I can’t recall — “Don’t you remember her?” my mother asks. “When you were in college? This and this and this happened.”

It takes a few minutes as I’m buckling Cy into his stroller. We’re leaving my childhood church where I’ve dropped off our 6 and 4-year-old for Vacation Bible School. Finally, I find a blurred face, a rushed conversation from over fifteen years ago, and my mother has jogged awake a memory I hadn’t retained.

_ _ _

Walking into that old church, I was overwhelmed by the smell. It wasn’t strong, and it wasn’t offensive. The overwhelm was pure memory. This was where I cut my teeth on theology. This was where I debated predestination, Calvinism in general, the point of baptism, the role of women in the church and in the family. I sat in the newly cushioned pews (they were wood when I was young), and I laughed out loud when the children started singing “We’re Glad to be Here at Vacation Bible School.” I laughed because I didn’t need the slides to remember every word, and some things really don’t change, even in 20 years.

Suddenly, I’m fourteen years old, a volunteer. My brothers and sister are there, and we’re surrounded by our friends, fellow learners, fellow strugglers, fellow beloveds. We’re singing our hearts out because back then, there was no such thing as embarrassment, and now, at 36, I sang loudly enough that two little girls in front of me spun around to see who was making that racket.

My girls were excited as they exited the sanctuary with their cousins and the rest of their class. They smiled at me but then scurried off, eager to play games, sing, and make crafts. Snack, of course, was one of their favorite parts, and it’s surprising how much goldfish pleases a child (or sometimes an adult). I left them, grateful for the safety of them having a teacher I’ve known my whole life.

_ _ _

I’ve been wrestling with interesting questions these days. I’d have it no other way, really, despite the fact that it makes for some teary conversations with Gabe and some long, worn-out journal entries that rarely provide answers. How do we share the love of God in a real, tangible way? Both with our children and the world? How do we acknowledge the Church’s failings without throwing her out with the bath water? How do trust the Holy Spirit to protect my babies’ hearts when others could unwittingly (or wittingly) lead them astray?

There is no perfect place here on this earth. Doughnuts help, but Sunday morning worship is still rife with quiet murmurings of unsettledness, lack of connection, deep, unspoken pain. What memories are my children gathering every day with such open hearts and minds it hurts me to observe them? Their inevitable future pain is already causing me pain, and I watch as they learn that evil exists:

“Mama, why did Europeans do that to the Native Americans?”

“Mama, why doesn’t he have a leg?”

“Mama, why are some people poor and others aren’t?”

Yes.

“Why, Lord?”

_ _ _

I will pick them up from VBS for the next five days, and I will listen attentively while they compete with each other to tell me about their mornings. Somehow, I will trust the Holy Spirit’s power to shut their ears to all that is unnecessary and open their ears to all that is True.

Their little brains will form memories in the same sanctuary where so much of my faith was formed and so many of my early thoughts of God were both challenged and upheld. It would be a lie if I said every memory there was beautiful and rosy. It would be a lie to say that in some ways, I have not sought to do the exact opposite with my faith, my children. But it would also be a lie to say that it didn’t shape me. I know I could call so many of those people, and even though we haven’t talked in years, they would be there for me. It is a lie to say beautiful things have not come from those memories, that place.

It was not a perfect place then, and it is not a perfect place now. But from what I hear, it is the imperfect that God uses to do his good work.

[Photo credit: Gabriel Knell]