Chapter 8: Remembering Without Returning

"Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old." Isaiah 43:18 (KJV)

There are things we wish we could forget.

Moments.

Words.

Faces.

Decisions.

Things we saw.

Things we did.

Things someone did to us.

Things we couldn't prevent.

Things we wish we could go backward and change.

Sometimes we think healing means reaching a place where those memories no longer exist.

Maybe if I'm really healed, I won't think about it anymore.

Maybe if I've really forgiven, remembering won't hurt.

Maybe if I've truly surrendered it, I won't ever wonder why.

But that's not necessarily healing.

We're human.

We remember.

And sometimes trying desperately not to remember something isn't healing at all.

Sometimes it's simply another way of covering the wound.

We bury it.

Avoid it.

Stay away from anything that reminds us.

Keep ourselves busy enough that we don't have to think.

Maybe that works for a while.

But buried doesn't necessarily mean healed.

And eventually something may remind us.

A place.

A smell.

A song.

A date.

A conversation.

Someone's tone of voice.

A season of the year.

Something seemingly insignificant.

And suddenly a memory we thought we'd moved beyond feels much closer than we expected.

Maybe the goal was never to forget.

Maybe restoration teaches us how to remember without returning.

Remembering Something Doesn't Mean We're Back There

This distinction matters.

A memory can feel incredibly present.

We remember what happened and our body responds.

Our chest tightens.

Our stomach turns.

Our heart beats faster.

Our muscles tense.

Maybe we become sad.

Angry.

Afraid.

Maybe for a moment we feel like the person we were then.

But we're not there.

We're here.

That's something we may need to remind ourselves.

That happened then.

This is now.

I survived that moment.

I am standing somewhere else today.

God is here with me now just as He was there with me then.

Maybe remembering becomes less frightening when we stop interpreting the memory as evidence that we've somehow lost all our progress.

A painful memory resurfacing doesn't necessarily mean we're back at the beginning.

Maybe another part of the wound is simply ready to be brought into the light.

Sometimes Our Bodies Remember Before Our Minds Do

There are times when we react before we understand why.

Something feels wrong.

We're tense.

Our heart starts racing.

We feel uneasy around a situation that seems harmless.

Maybe we become emotional and can't immediately explain it.

Sometimes our bodies learned something during difficult experiences too.

Be alert.

Get ready.

Something is coming.

And long after the original circumstance is gone, our bodies may still respond to something that resembles it.

That doesn't mean every physical reaction is revealing some hidden trauma.

Bodies are complicated.

Stress, exhaustion, illness, hormones, hunger, and many other things can affect how we feel.

But sometimes a strong reaction is worth becoming curious about rather than ashamed of.

What just happened?

What did that remind me of?

Why did my body react before I understood what I was feeling?

Maybe we don't immediately know.

That's okay.

We can bring that uncertainty to God too.

Lord, something in me reacted strongly.

Help me understand what needs attention without making me afraid of the reaction itself.

Avoiding the Memory Can Give It More Power

Sometimes we organize our lives around never touching something painful.

Don't go there.

Don't talk about that.

Don't think about them.

Don't look at those pictures.

Don't ask that question.

Maybe some avoidance is wise for a season.

We don't have to deliberately expose ourselves to things simply because they hurt.

But eventually we may need to ask:

Am I choosing not to engage with something because it isn't healthy or necessary?

Or am I afraid of what will happen inside me if I remember?

Because if an old memory determines where we can go, what we can talk about, who we can trust, what we can feel, and what we're allowed to think about, then the past may still have more authority over the present than we realized.

Healing doesn't require us to continually revisit painful things.

But maybe it does mean the memory no longer gets to control us through avoidance.

It's Okay to Be Sad About Something That Is Over

Sometimes we judge ourselves for grief.

Why am I still sad?

It's been years.

I've forgiven.

I've moved forward.

I'm happy now.

Maybe all of that is true.

And maybe something was still sad.

We can be grateful for where we are and grieve something that happened before we got here.

We can know God redeemed a season and still wish the season had never been necessary.

We can forgive someone and still feel sadness about what was lost.

We can be content with the life we have now and still acknowledge that something from our past mattered.

Grief doesn't automatically mean we want to go back.

Sometimes grief simply means:

That mattered to me.

And maybe healing gives us permission to acknowledge that without believing the sadness has to become our home.

We Can Grieve Things We Did Too

Sometimes the painful memory isn't primarily what someone did to us.

It's what we did.

Maybe we remember who we were during a particular season.

Choices.

Words.

Ways we responded.

People we hurt.

Things we wish we'd understood sooner.

And sadness comes.

Maybe that's appropriate.

Repentance doesn't require us to become emotionally indifferent toward our past.

We can look back and think:

I wish I had done differently.

But we don't have to turn that sadness into another life sentence.

Maybe we can say:

God, thank You that I'm able to see differently now.

Thank You that You corrected me.

Thank You that You didn't leave me there.

Help me use what I learned instead of continually punishing myself for needing to learn it.

The memory can become wisdom instead of condemnation.

Sometimes We Still Want to Know Why

Why did they do that?

Why didn't I see it?

Why did God allow it?

Why did this happen when it did?

Why didn't things turn out differently?

Maybe we've asked those questions hundreds of times.

Sometimes answers come.

Sometimes they don't.

And maybe there are things we'll never completely understand from where we're standing.

That's difficult because understanding feels like control.

If I can understand exactly why something happened, maybe I can make sure it never happens again.

But some things aren't ours to completely understand.

Maybe peace sometimes comes when we can say:

I still don't know why.

And I don't have to solve the why before I can keep walking.

Remember Where You Are Now

Maybe this is especially important when an old memory becomes vivid.

Look around.

Where are you now?

What has changed?

What has God done since then?

What do you know now that you didn't know then?

Who has He brought into your life?

What has He taught you?

What has He healed?

What can you do now that you couldn't do then?

Maybe the memory says:

Look what happened.

And restoration says:

Yes.

And look where God has brought me since.

We don't have to deny the first statement to believe the second.

Both can be true.

The wound happened.

And healing happened too.

Sometimes God Shows Us the Story Differently

I remember getting ready for church one Sunday morning and feeling the weight of my own story.

Mom of five kids.

Married twice.

Divorced twice.

And three different last names under one roof.

Three.

After my second divorce, I had taken back my maiden name. So even my own last name was different from my children's.

Sitting in front of the mirror that morning, getting ready for church, that detail felt heavy.

Maybe because last names can represent something.

Family.

Marriage.

Belonging.

The story we thought we were building.

And here I was looking at my household and seeing three of them.

But I need to make something very clear.

I wasn't ashamed of my children.

When I take my children somewhere, I'm proud to be their mom.

They're beautiful kids.

They're polite.

They love each other.

They love me.

Most of the time, they're very well behaved. I've had people compliment me many times on their behavior and even comment on how obvious it is that they love their mom.

I don't walk into a room with my five children wishing my family looked different.

I'm proud of them.

The shame I was wrestling with that morning belonged to the way I was looking at myself.

Five children.

Two marriages.

Two divorces.

Three last names.

And I wondered what those facts said about the woman sitting in front of the mirror.

There are moments when being a single mother of five can feel reckless when I say it out loud.

Had I been reckless with my own life?

Had I run ahead of God?

Had I tried to create something in my timing instead of waiting for His?

How did I end up here?

And maybe the deepest question underneath all of it was:

What does this say about me?

That's when God began showing me something completely different.

Because the existence of my children didn't confirm the shame I was placing on myself.

Their existence testified against it.

Before I knew any of them, God knew them.

Before I held them, He formed them.

Before any of us carried any last name, He knew exactly who they were.

"For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb." Psalm 139:13 (KJV)

"I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made..." Psalm 139:14 (KJV)

"Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written..." Psalm 139:16 (KJV)

My children were meant to be here.

Every one of them.

God knew them.

God formed them.

God gave them life.

And He entrusted them to me.

Three last names didn't confuse God about who belonged in our family.

They were part of our earthly story.

They told something about where we had been.

But they didn't tell the whole story.

And they certainly didn't determine what God could do with any of us.

Sitting there that morning, I felt God impress something else on my heart.

These children are going to do great things for His Kingdom.

Not because I would perfectly produce that outcome.

Not because their mother had gotten everything right.

But because they belonged to Him before they ever belonged to me.

God knew them.

God formed them.

God had purpose for them.

And He had entrusted me with the privilege and responsibility of raising them to know Him, love Him, and learn to walk with Him.

I wasn't suddenly pretending my past was perfect.

It wasn't.

There were things I wished I had done differently.

There were places where I had run ahead of God.

There were things He was still healing in me.

But my children weren't part of the shame.

Their existence testified against it.

Five beautiful lives.

Five lives God intentionally formed.

Five lives He entrusted to me.

Five lives with purpose.

And somehow, in a household with three different last names, God wasn't looking at us and seeing a family He couldn't use.

He was showing me that He already had purpose there.

And before that Sunday was over, He was going to let me see a glimpse of it in the shyest little boy of the bunch.

Jesus Had Been Sitting With Me the Whole Time

And then God gave me a picture.

In my mind, I saw a woman sitting on a log beside a campfire.

Someone was sitting next to her.

And somehow I knew it was me and Jesus.

He wasn't standing over me condemning me.

He wasn't listing every place I had gotten something wrong.

He wasn't impatiently asking why I hadn't figured everything out sooner.

He was simply there.

Calmly sitting beside me.

And I began seeing my story differently.

There had been times when I had tried to run from slavery at the wrong time.

I wanted freedom.

I wanted out.

But instead of waiting for God to lead me out, there were times I tried to run on my own.

And I got captured again.

Maybe the circumstances looked different.

But there I was again.

Bound by something else.

Fear.

Pain.

Choices.

Relationships.

Things I thought would lead toward freedom but didn't.

And yet Jesus stayed.

He didn't abandon me because I ran ahead.

He didn't stop providing a way because I hadn't followed the way the first time.

He remained.

Patient.

Steady.

Present.

And when I finally learned to wait on Him, I began seeing what He had been doing all along.

He hadn't only been bringing me out.

He had been redeeming what I thought was ruined.

Restoring what had been wounded.

Renewing the way I saw the story.

And Then God Let Me See the Fruit

I finished getting ready.

And I took my kids to church.

My youngest, and probably the shyest of the bunch, decided he didn't want to go into the children's service that morning.

He wanted to sit with me.

So out of all five of my children, he was the one sitting beside me during the adult service.

Just the two of us.

We looked through a connect card together.

He asked questions.

He drew pictures.

I read things to him and explained what they meant.

Then we came to the section about baptism.

He started asking questions.

He had already accepted Christ the year before.

But apparently God had been stirring something else in his heart.

He wanted to be baptized.

I hadn't planned that.

We hadn't even been thinking about it being Baptism Sunday.

There had been a baptism during the first service that morning, but we were attending the second service. There weren't any baptisms planned during our service.

By the end of the service, my son wanted to talk to the pastor.

So we waited.

When we finally spoke with him, the pastor told my son that we could schedule his baptism for the next month.

But then he told him something else.

If God was telling him to get baptized now, he wanted my son to know that he didn't have to wait.

Everything was already there.

The baptismal had already been prepared because of the baptism during the earlier service.

Without us knowing any of this when we left home that morning, the water was already waiting.

We hadn't brought a change of clothes.

We hadn't prepared for any of it.

And my shy little boy didn't hesitate.

He was excited.

He wanted to do it.

Right then.

This wasn't adults convincing a reluctant child that he should be baptized.

He had asked the questions.

He wanted to talk to the pastor.

He was given the option to wait.

And he was excited to say:

I want to do it now.

And that same Sunday morning when I had sat in front of a mirror questioning what my own story said about me, I got to stand there and watch God do something big in someone very little.

One of those five children.

One of those five lives God had just reminded me He had intentionally entrusted to me.

The Water Was Already Waiting

I think that's one of the details I love most when I remember that day.

The water was already waiting.

Before my son asked.

Before I knew.

Before we talked to the pastor.

Before I understood what God had been doing in his heart.

Provision had already been made for the next step.

And isn't that so much of what God had been showing me that morning?

I had spent parts of my life running ahead because I couldn't see the way out.

But God wasn't scrambling to create a way after I finally figured things out.

He was already there.

He had been there.

And that morning, I watched that truth play out right in front of me.

I didn't manufacture what happened in my son's heart.

I couldn't.

I could take him to church.

Teach him.

Pray for him.

Answer his questions.

Point him toward Jesus.

But I couldn't make him accept Christ.

I couldn't make him desire baptism.

I couldn't create conviction.

God had been doing something in him that I couldn't see.

And when my son was ready for the next step, God had already prepared the water.

Maybe I needed that picture as much as my son needed the baptism.

God's provision doesn't begin when I finally notice it.

Ransomed. Redeemed. Restored. Renewed.

Maybe that Sunday was when those words became personal in a different way.

Ransomed.

Christ had continually provided a way out of the things that held me.

Even when I ran ahead.

Even when I got captured again.

He didn't stop coming for me.

Redeemed.

God was showing me that my story wasn't wasted.

He wasn't pretending my mistakes hadn't happened.

He was showing me that my mistakes weren't greater than His ability to redeem.

Restored.

He was healing the shame that made me look into a mirror and see myself as reckless, damaged, or disqualified.

He was teaching me to tell the truth about my life without using the truth as a weapon against myself.

Renewed.

And there was my little boy.

Excited.

Climbing into baptismal water that had already been prepared before either of us knew he would need it.

One of five children God knew before they were born.

One of five children He had entrusted to me.

One of five lives with purpose.

Maybe renewal wasn't God giving me the spotless story I thought I was supposed to have.

Maybe renewal was teaching me to see the story through His eyes.

My Children Have Their Own Stories With God

My children aren't simply part of my story.

They have their own stories with God.

Their own relationships with Him.

Their own gifts.

Their own callings.

Their own choices.

Their own purposes.

My responsibility isn't to write their stories for them.

It's to faithfully raise them, teach them, love them, correct them, pray for them, and point them toward Christ.

Then I have to trust God with the work that only He can do inside them.

That Sunday, I got to see a glimpse of it.

God had been stirring something in my son's heart without asking me to manage it.

And maybe that's another way God was restoring me.

He wasn't asking me to perfectly manufacture five Kingdom lives.

He was asking me to faithfully raise five children who ultimately belong to Him.

That's different.

And it's lighter.

Not less important.

But placed where the weight actually belongs.

Maybe I Had Been Looking at the Wrong Person

When I looked into the mirror that morning, I saw me.

My marriages.

My divorces.

My decisions.

My failures.

My regrets.

Maybe God was inviting me to look beyond myself.

Not to avoid responsibility.

But to stop making myself the center of the story.

Because if I'm the center, then everything depends upon how well I performed.

But if God is the center, then my failures aren't the end of the story.

Neither are my successes.

His faithfulness is.

God's story doesn't need me to make it complete.

I don't add something He lacks.

But by His grace, He lets me participate in what He's doing.

And He entrusted me with five children who get to participate too.

That morning, I thought I was taking my children to church.

But God was already writing something I couldn't see.

Remembering Without Returning

That's why I can remember that Sunday differently now.

I don't have to return to the shame I felt sitting in front of the mirror.

I can remember the woman who felt it.

I can understand her.

I can tell the truth about why she felt that way.

But I don't have to become her again every time I remember.

Because now the memory holds something else too.

A campfire.

Jesus sitting beside me.

Five children God intentionally created.

A shy little boy asking questions.

A pastor willing to listen.

Water already waiting.

And a child excited to publicly say:

I belong to Jesus.

The facts of my past didn't change that Sunday.

But the meaning I had been giving them did.

Maybe that's restoration.

Sometimes God doesn't erase the memory.

He meets us inside it until we can finally see that He was part of the story too.

Questions to Carry Forward

Is there a memory I've been avoiding because I'm afraid of what I'll feel if I acknowledge it?

When an old memory resurfaces, do I assume I've lost progress, or can I become curious about what may still need healing?

Am I carrying grief over something I did and confusing that grief with a requirement to continually punish myself?

Are there questions I've been trying to answer because uncertainty feels harder than surrender?

Can I look at where I am now and recognize what God has done since the thing I'm remembering happened?

When I look backward, do I only see myself and other people, or can I begin asking where Christ was in the story?

Can a painful memory become testimony without pretending the pain was good?

And perhaps the question to carry forward:

What if the evidence that I'm restored isn't that I can no longer remember what happened, but that when I remember, the wound is no longer the only thing I can see?

I can see grace.

Growth.

Correction.

Provision.

Purpose.

Christ.

Maybe that's remembering without returning.

The memory remains behind me.

The wisdom comes with me.

And Christ continues leading me forward.

"Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever." Hebrews 13:8 (KJV)

"We love him, because he first loved us." 1 John 4:19 (KJV)