Why Memories Matter

It might happen upon you like a gentle breeze, a brush across contented face, a knowing sigh and exhale of understanding and peace. It could arrive like an intruder, catching you unaware, a breath lodged at base of throat, a frozen silence wedged between the question mark and the answer. A loved one's dying words, a message quaking the soul. Or an image flits across the mind, one that you've already memorized for future reference, only you don't know the why. It's in the soft folds of transparent petals, the smell of freshly mowed lawn, a song that stills movement, a millennium of chances and histories and dances. A patchwork quilt sewn together with pieces of fabric from clothes once worn in high school and you never understood the reason for the individual squares, until one day you see the story unfolding across the bed. A quote by Margaret Therkelsen, I think she understood the why I want to clutch the tender recollections: "Our God loves to come; He wants to come forth in us, to rise up in us in all His beauty." It is the rising that causes that catch of breath, a third glance at exquisitely written lines in a delicious book, an ear picking up a bird's sweet trilling song. He rose and continues to rise with each precious memory that blankets our thoughts. A mind quilted with tendrils of grace knows the past and present weave together, and the need to understand in the moment is unimportant. What matters is the deep trusting, the naked, blind trust that good has already won and the light will eclipse our most sorrowful memories, most painful snapshots hanging on display in bruised heart. The daring to believe that He thought of me on that day so long ago, a brilliant light that holds the dark captive, it enables me to take that next step forward, feet that scissor across the pattern He already laid out. Each memory washed clean, each moment bathed in grace, each opportunity a chance to let go and let those hands do the work only He was meant to do.