When Memories Serve
In the years that followed my brother’s death, a wall stood between God and me.
I never really doubted God was there, and I never really doubted that my brother was somewhere, but I could not understand or forgive a God who did not intercede and spare the life of a truly gentle, truly good man. I asked for answers, and they did not come. And so, in the end, I placed a wall between God and me.
I explained this carefully to God. I explained to God that I could not “feel close” to Him or “have a relationship” with Him while my brother’s death stood between us. I was sorry, but that was just the way it had to be, especially if He was not going to help me along, give me some answers, make me understand how such a thing could ever be okay. If I ever caught myself falling into my old habit of talking to God, I would stop myself and picture a wall in my mind, a wall made of thick concrete blocks, as wide and as high as I could imagine it. Sometimes, I’d even point out the wall to God, just to remind Him it was still there.
I’m an Irishwoman, and Irishwomen have unbelievable staying power. I maintained the wall for several years.
They were some of the happiest years of my life.
WAITWAT?!?!?!
Are you surprised? The years I maintained the wall between God and me, I lived in a big Victorian home with many windows,12-feet-high ceilings, ornate woodwork that had never been painted a “modern” color and staircases with landings so generous that the children would sometimes set up their toys and play there. I had a beautiful front porch that ran the width of the house, a white picket fence and mature trees, and I had it all in a sleepy little neighborhood that seemed content to let the world just pass it by. I spent my days with four children who played with me, laughed with me, cleaned house with me, sang with me, danced with me – four children who showered me in those few short years with more love than most people know in a lifetime. And I was truly, deeply, joyfully happy.
As my random God sightings began to occur (check that out in my book Random God Sightings), God and I began to reconcile as we removed the wall, one thick concrete block at a time, at a pace that was comfortable for me. Finally, one day I found myself so comfortable with God again that I remarked to Him impulsively, “It’s too bad, Father, about those years in the green house…those years I spent without You.”
But my memories were ready to serve, and this must have been the moment I was ready to receive, because suddenly I was awash in a flood of memories. <flash> Me, singing with the radio, laboring over the paint job on the front porch banisters, the twins chattering in the nearby playpen <flash> Afternoon walks to the park and then to The Candy Break, toddlers in the stroller and the two other littles “holding on” to their side of the stroller <flash> Large maple trees and feeding ducks <flash> Children on my lap and at my knees, children hugging me, children loving me. “Mommy, come see.” “Mommy, look at me!” “Mommy, I love you.”
As the memories washed over me, I remembered the light. There had always been something about the light in the big old house as it streamed in through the house’s many windows, something about the way it filled the rooms…the way it struck the children as they played on the stair landing…It intrigued me. There was always so. much.
Light.
I began to cry, as I came to fully understand that I had not spent those years away from God. God had been present every day. Every. Day. He was there in the children. He was the trees and the ducks. He was the house itself that held us all, strong and steady. He was the light streaming in the windows, the light that seemed to fill my house even on rainy days. But most of all, He was the Love expressed: the Love given and the Love received.
I realized in that moment that the years in the big green house had been some of the happiest years of my life because I had lived them in the easy presence of Love…in the easy presence of God.
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Let your memories serve you, my friends. There are gifts they wish to give you, and they’ve waited such a long time to give them. Don’t be afraid. If there is pain and sorrow in your past, allow your memories to show you where, in the midst of your suffering and mourning, God was. You need only ask. They are waiting. He is waiting.