Forgetfulness

January 1, 2013             Forgetfulness

I hesitate to make resolutions at the beginning of the year, not because I don’t need to do better, but because I tend to forget what I resolved.  I’m not trying to be funny here; it is just true.

This year (actually in just a few days) I will be turning 59.  I can’t really wrap my mind around this fact, because I don’t know where the years went.  I remember being a little girl, becoming a teenager, graduating from high school and college, getting married, having our son, and standing beside his baby bed as he slept and saying aloud to him, “Don’t grow up too fast.”  He turns 30 in January!

Getting older has its advantages and disadvantages; this is also true of forgetfulness.  It seems that daily “my forgetter gets better,” as my daddy said as he got older.  I frequently forget where I left my glasses, where I last had my phone, or why I walked into a different room.  I can remember events from my childhood, but I don’t remember if I turned off my curling brush just a few minutes ago.

As I look back over the past year, I remember much that was difficult and painful.  Life is like that.  Sickness and death touched my family more than once during 2012.  These days will not be forgotten easily.  Yet, there were also great times of healing, and hope, and happiness that I want to remember.  In addition, last year brought times of hurt and rejection and discouragement, some of which came from people for whom I care deeply. 

I think that forgetfulness may sometimes need to be a deliberate choice.  The Apostle Paul said it this way in Philippians 3:13-16:

“I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have already attained.”

I have studied the concept of “forget” for a long time.  The pairing of forgetting and forgiving has especially given me times of agony.  After all, women never forget some things!  Years ago I read a definition of forgiveness that has helped me with this struggle. It said something like this. “Forgiveness is not pretending like something did not happen; it is remembering that it happened, but choosing not to let it hurt you again.”

So, my choice and goal for 2013 will be to forget-- forget the hurts and those who caused them; forget to let the past continue to hurt me.  Instead, I will press harder to be more loving, more forgiving, and to be more like Christ.  When I fail, and I know I will, I hope others will forget and be forgiving toward me.