Tell them who they are, to whom they belong, and …

Oh, wow. A blog post that sounded like music, like a symphony. Rachel’s words rang oh-so-true and I knew I had to share them with you.

You’ll want to read the whole post but below is the excerpt that made my heart sing.

"Telling them the story that they couldn't remember

but which belonged to them

was like cracking open a space in their self-identity

and pouring in the backstory.

This is where you came from,

this is what brought you to this here and this now.

This is what we once feared and grieved

and how we moved forward.

This is your story,

this is who we are."

Rachel Pieh Jones, "Telling Them Their Story"

Like Rachel, you and I mustn't assume our kids, grands, and great-grands know stories from when they were little.

And we must be deliberate in telling them important stories that happened before they were born, intentional in telling them stories that would have a significant impact on them once they were born.

Remember, your children were not the ones who saw and experienced the Lord your God: His majesty, His greatness, His awesome power. It was not your children who saw what he did for you in your desert wilderness and how He brought you to this place. No, you saw these things with your own eyes (Deuteronomy 11:2-7, paraphrased). 

Therefore…

We will tell the next generation the praise-worthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders he has done … so the next generation would know … even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children. Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds, but would keep his commands (Psalm 78:4b, 6-7 NIV). 

We need to tell our children, grandchildren and great-grands who they are, to whom they belong, and how they became who they are and where they are.

What brought you to where you are now?

What brought your kids and grandkids to where they are now?

To whom do they belong?

What events, what stories, belong to your family and shaped who you all are?

You have a great opportunity to carry out a holy work.

Writing your stories is so much more than a hobby, so much more than just telling stories and spinning yarns and reminiscing about the past.

You have stories only you can tell.

You are part of a story much bigger than you. Your story includes earlier generations, and it's your privilege to be sure your kids and grands and great-grands know their part in that story, too.

Writing your stories is a ministry!

Write stories that will be like

"cracking open a space in their self-identity

and pouring in the backstory."

Write stories that tell your family:

"This is your story,

this is who we are."

Tuesday Tidbit: Leave behind much more than your possessions

Here’s your 15 seconds of inspiration,

today’s Tuesday Tidbit:

“What is your legacy to the world?

What will happen to your experiences,

thoughts, perceptions,

and memories—

the stories you’ve created to make sense of life?

Will you contribute to the rich history of your family

by writing your own stories?

Or will you leave behind

only your possessions

and other physical evidence of your time on earth?”

Amber Lea Starfire, “Why your stories matter”

(emphasis mine)

Be sure to read the rest of Amber Lea Starfire's post. 

It will inspire you!

“To remember only the pain, or only the joy, would be incomplete”

This month’s blog posts on Thursdays resulted from welcome comments Samantha White left after my blog post, Don’t Forget Your Memories!

If you’ve been hanging around SM 101 for a while, you know we emphasize the importance of remembering, based on several Bible verses, and Samantha’s probing ponderings brought real-life clarity to the topic.

With grace and wisdom, Samantha wrote, “Remembering can be a great gift and also a great curse. Memories can haunt us and pull us away from the present.…”

And so, her insight brings us to the end of this month’s examination of forgiveness and whether forgiving also means forgetting.

(If you missed earlier posts, here are links: Does forgiveness leave room for forgetting AND remembering?  We’ve all been there.  Is God’s grace is out of reach?) If we’re ready for “…a radical reconstruction of the heart,” (Max Lucado), God is ready and eager to forgive. God’s forgiveness is complete. Perfect. We also need to forgive ourselves.)  

So the question today is:

After God forgives us, after God takes our sins from us—as far as the east is from the west!—should we forget our wrongdoings? Or should we remember them?

Here’s what I think:

If remembering keeps us stuck in pain and regret,

if remembering prevents us from moving on,

if remembering keeps us mired in self-loathing,

if remembering our forgiven sins defines us and declares us ruined for the rest of our lives,

then remembering is not God’s best for us.

On the other hand,

if remembering focuses us on God’s unfailing love and all-sufficient grace,

if remembering makes us fall on our knees before Him in awe and thanksgiving,

if remembering speaks of  “a joyful release from the things that have bound us far too long” (Chuck Swindoll, Grace Awakening),

if remembering helps us hope,

if remembering blows us away,

if remembering shows how far God has brought us,

if remembering leads us to delight in God and love Him more,

then let’s remember!

God invites us to a sacred remembering,

a sacred remembering that releases us from wallowing in old history,

a sacred remembering that invites us to be our true selves: “Your True Self is who you are in God and who God is in you” (Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for our True Self),

a sacred remembering that enables us to live in the present, and for the future,

a sacred remembering that leads us to say, like David,

“Let all that I am praise the Lord; may I never forget the good things he does for me. He forgives all my sins” (Psalm 103:1-2, NLT).

and, “You have changed my sadness into a joyful dance; you have taken away all my sorrow and surrounded me with joy. So I will not be silent; I will sing praise to you. Lord, you are my God; I will give you thanks forever” (Psalm 30:11-12, GNT).

 “Never be afraid when God brings back the past.

Let memory have its way.

God will turn the ‘might have been’

into a wonderful beginning for the future.”

(Oswald Chambers)

Forget the things that happened in the past.

Do not keep thinking about them.

I am about to do something new.

Don’t you see it coming?

I am going to make a way for you

to go through the desert.

I will make streams of water

in the dry and empty land.

  (Isaiah 43:18,19, NIRV)

God invites us to a sacred remembering in which we view our forgiven sins not as through rose-colored glasses, but as through grace-fogged glasses, when we view forgiven sins as distant clouds, as morning mists.

Samantha wrote these rich, insightful words that will bless your life and help you write your memoir:

“Memories can … make us deeply grateful for all the good we’ve received. One of the gifts for me in writing my memoir is that it helped me put my most painful memories to rest. By publishing them, I have given them wings on which to fly and stay alive, without my having to personally relive them daily.… The Bible is about times of pestilence and suffering AND triumph and survival. I suppose we need to remember it all … that life was difficult, and that we overcame and grew.… To remember only the pain, or only the joy, would be incomplete. We need to remember it all, as a package, because life is all of it. Pain and loss, healing and joy. We LEARN by remembering!!! I think the message of the Bible, ‘Remember,’ also means ‘Don’t let the suffering, nor what was gained and learned from it, be wasted. Learn. Remember what we’ve learned.’”

Many thanks, Samantha! 

You have blessed us all!

Tuesday Tidbit – “Let writing be another way to worship the Lord”

 Here's your 15 seconds of inspiration for this week,

your Tuesday Tidbit:

Recognize that your readers might fear God’s grace is out of reach

Your readers need to know your stories about forgiveness because they might think they’re beyond God’s grace—at least one of them, maybe several of them.

I haven’t researched the topic but I suspect every memoir involves some aspect of forgiveness:

Our need to forgive others

Our need to ask forgiveness from others

Our need to ask God’s forgiveness

Our need to accept and embrace God’s forgiveness

Our need to forgive ourselves

If I’m right—if every memoir involves some aspect of forgiveness—do we treat forgiveness like the elephant in the room?

In one way or another, forgiveness surrounds our everyday lives, from birth to death, but do we shy away from taking a serious look at it?

It looms, maybe in the corner of the room, but are we uncomfortable discussing it?

As a memoirist, how are you addressing the topic of forgiveness?

Last week I challenged you with this:

Your readers—

your kids, grandkids, great-grandkids,

generations yet unborn—

will struggle with their own failures

and weaknesses

and temptations

and sins.

God can use your life’s stories

to help them turn to Him

for forgiveness and restoration.

Twice this month we’ve looked at a couple components of forgiveness. Today, let’s continue:

We need to accept and embrace God’s forgiveness, and we need to forgive ourselves:

After we’ve confessed and asked God’s forgiveness for our sins against Him and others, after we’ve radically, deliberately, sincerely turned our lives around, too often we continue to beat ourselves up over our failures. Too often we still consider ourselves soiled, ruined, disgraced. We feel doomed to live with shame the rest of our lives.

If that’s where you are today, I encourage you to ban the following judgment of yourself:

Instead, ask God to help you embrace the following:

Rest in the assurance that God’s forgiveness is complete, perfect, lacking nothing.

Believe God’s promise to forgive (1 John 1:9, Proverbs 28:13, Psalm 103:12).  

LIVE like you are forgiven (Psalm 32:5).

Relax in God’s love, mercy, and grace (Zephaniah 3:17).

Delight yourself in the joy of the Lord (2 Samuel 22:20, Psalm 16:16, Psalm 35:9, Isaiah 61:10, Nehemiah 8:10, Psalm 92:4).

Your stories are important—people need to know your stories of giving and receiving forgiveness—but spelling out every last detail might not be appropriate.

How much do you share with your readers—your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren?

“How open and honest do we need to be?

Do we have to tell our readers everything?

No!”

(Marlene Bagnull)

In Write His Answer: A Bible Study for Christian Writers, Marlene Bagnull points out that Paul, in the New Testament, must have had deep regrets over his persecution of Christians, yet he didn’t dodge it, he didn’t treat it like the elephant in the room.

Instead, spoke of his sinful life (Acts 22). He didn’t tell all the gory details of how he persecuted people, but he told the most important information: the Lord confronted him and called him to repent so he could tell others about God’s grace and forgiveness. Paul wrote, “Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy….The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly…” (1 Timothy 1:13-16; see also Romans 8:2).  

Paul didn’t record what, specifically, was the thorn in his flesh (2 Corinthians 12:7-8).

He wrote that he kept doing things he didn’t want to do, but didn’t name them (Romans 7:15).  

But Paul always pointed his listeners and readers to God’s grace.

And he did so even though he knew he still was not perfect. “I am still not all I should be,” he admitted (Philippians 3:13).

You see, it wasn’t because Paul was so great. No, it was because God was and still is so great!

Like Paul, you and I are far from perfect, and, like Paul, we don’t need to tell all our gory details. But with humility, if God so leads, we can share transparently some of our failures in tactful ways so that we, like Paul, can tell how God saved us and changed us—by His staggering grace and mercy.

Your stories and mine are important because those who read them might think they’re beyond God’s grace. Our stories might inspire them to accept God’s forgiveness for themselves.

“Out of his awareness of his own sinful nature,

Paul was able to point others to

‘the power of the life-giving Spirit’ (Romans 8:2).

We can do the same.”

Marlene Bagnull, Write His Answer

With God’s help, we must write stories that point readers to God's grace. We can write stories to bless entire families and generations—not because you and I are so great, but because God is so great!

Tuesday Tidbit – From generation to generation

Here's your 15 seconds of inspiration,

your Tuesday Tidbit:

What stories do you need to write

so that

your future generations

can know what 

God has done for you?

I never dreamed I'd be capable of doing that

We’ve all been there. We’ve chosen to do something selfish, mean, immoral—or maybe even illegal.

We’ve made willful decisions that hurt people and bring shame upon us. Deliberate actions that cause life-long consequences—for ourselves and others.

Sometimes it takes a long, long time to admit our transgression.

And when we do, the enormity of our offence hits right between the eyes.

The depth of our wrongdoing feels like a kick in the stomach and we take a new look at ourselves and say, “I never dreamed I could be capable of doing that.”

“Who am I? And what that kind of person am I, really?”

Yes, we’ve all been there.

Eventually we realize we couldn’t hide any of it from God. He knows every detail.

 

Like David, we cry out, 

Oh, God, don’t cast me away! 

Don’t reject me! 

(Psalm 51:11)

And we know deep down inside that we can do nothing—nothing—to undo what we’ve done. We can’t make our actions disappear. We are powerless to do anything to clean ourselves up.

All we can do is fall on our faces, confess our hard-hearted, selfish disobedience, and ask God’s forgiveness.

If our repentance is sincere, God is ready to forgive.

If we’re ready for “…a radical reconstruction of the heart,” (Max Lucado), God is ready to forgive.

Repentance:

“… a radical

and deliberate

turning or returning to God

that results in

moral

and ethical

change

and action.”

(from NIV Study Bible footnote for Matthew 4:17; 

emphasis mine)

Yes, God is eager to forgive.

Remember that symphony from last Thursday? Here it is again:

“God not only puts our sins out of sight

(Isaiah 38:17);

he also puts them out of reach

(Micah 7:19, Psalm 103:12),

out of mind

(Jeremiah 31:34)

and out of existence

(Isaiah 43:25; Isaiah 44:22; Psalm 51:1, 9; Acts 3:19).”

(NIV Study Bible’s comment for Isaiah 38:17; emphasis mine)

God’s forgiveness is complete.

His forgiveness is perfect.

We are undeserving, but “… Through forgiveness, [God] releases us from a debt we could never pay and assures us of His continuing love for us.” (Martin De Haan)

Our only response must be to accept His mindboggling forgiveness, grace, and mercy.

Fully accepting and grasping God’s forgiveness can take a long time, but after we do, can we forgive ourselves?

And after God forgives us, after God takes our sins from us—as far as the east is from the west!—should we forget our wrongdoings? Or should we remember our willful disobedience? Or should we do a little bit of both?

We’ll come back to this next week but, for now, think about these questions. Pray about these questions.

Listen to something important:

Your readers—

your kids, grandkids, great-grandkids,

generations yet unborn—

will struggle with their own failures

and weaknesses

and temptations

and sins.

God can use your life’s stories

to help them turn to Him

for forgiveness and restoration.

Your stories are important.

Spelling out every last detail

might not be appropriate

(more on that next week)

but with God’s help,

you can write stories to bless

entire families and generations.

What stories do you need to write?

(Revised from an earlier post)

Tuesday Tidbit: “Without you I wouldn’t be who I am.”

Here’s your 15 seconds of inspiration for today,

your Tuesday Tidbit:

“Without you I wouldn’t be who I am.”

(Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey)

Henri Nouwen wrote of the importance of receiving—of accepting—from others, things like encouragement, affirmation, insight, bravery, advice, perspective, support.

Who comes to mind when you read such words and sentences?

Perhaps several people come to mind—individuals who helped shape you into the person you are today.

Write about those people and your experiences together and include those stories in your memoir.

Nouwen wrote of saying:

“‘Thank you, you gave me hope;

thank you, you gave me a reason to live;

thank you, you allowed me to realize my dream.…’”

(from Bread for the Journey)

Even if those important folks no longer walk the earth, write stories that will thank them.

Forgiveness: forgetting and remembering?

“‘I was wrong. I’m sorry. Now let’s get on with business. It’s your job to forgive me. It’s time for us both to put this behind us.’ With a few well-chosen words, the tables are turned. Like a wrestler doing an escape and reverse, an offender gains the upper hand. His victims are now expected to forgive and forget.

“He might even remind them that according to Jesus, if we don’t forgive others, our Father in heaven won’t forgive us (Matthew 6:14-15).

“Now that I’ve admitted my wrong, now that God has forgiven me, and now that the Bible requires you to forgive me, why can’t we act like this never happened?”

Thus writes Martin De Haan in his article, Forgiveness (from Times of Discovery, Volume 60, Number 1; emphasis mine).

He continues, “We’ve been told that when God forgives, He forgets, and that if we really forgive, we’ll forget too.”

If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of such words, you know the ripping, searing feeling in your heart because something about this doesn’t seem quite right!

So, let’s look at what the Bible says about God’s forgiveness:

“God not only puts our sins out of sight,

(Isaiah 38:17);

he also puts them out of reach,

(Micah 7:19, Psalm 103:12),

out of mind,

(Jeremiah 31:34)

and out of existence.

(Isaiah 43:25; Isaiah 44:22; Psalm 51:1, 9; Acts 3:19).”

(NIV Study Bible’s comment for Isaiah 38:17; emphasis mine)

So, God forgets.

God forgets?

“God doesn’t forget anything,” states De Haan. “From cover to cover, the Bible shows that God remembers the sins of His people.

“Both Old and New Testaments are full of stories which preserve forever the memory of His people’s forgiven wrongs.”

Whoa. I don’t know about you, but sometimes the Bible and God jerk my emotions around.

So God forgets but He also remembers?

De Haan proposes that forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting. He observes that while we can easily forget some wrongs against us, others are “always near the edge of our awareness.”

“When God says He will not remember our sins,” De Haan says, “He means He won’t remember them against us.”

Read that again: “When God says He will not remember our sins, He means He won’t remember them against us.”

Pastor Sid said it this way one Sunday morning: To forgive is to let go of holding someone guilty.

In the Hebrew, Jeremiah 31:34 means God will not mention, recount, bring to remembrance, or think about those of our sins He has forgiven.

Max Lucado has an earthier way of explaining it: When God says He will remember our sins no more, it means He will not rub our noses in them.

So what should we do when someone says to us, “The Bible requires you to forgive me, why can’t we act like this never happened?”

“Forgiveness may not involve complete restoration,” suggests De Haan.

“… Forgiveness doesn’t require a return to business as usual. There may be results that are irreversible.…”

De Haan is talking about natural, reasonable, and logical consequences.

“Forgiveness may allow for consequences. A forgiver may still wisely and lovingly ask for reasonable restitution, legal due process, a plan to avoid recurrences, and time to heal. Wise follow-through is often necessary if we are going to forgive and love well.”

Forgiveness takes lots of time and it requires the offender’s genuine repentance.

“Repentance is more than

a change of mind

or feeling sorry for one’s sins.

It is a radical

and deliberate

turning or returning to God

that results in

moral

and ethical

change

and action.”

(from NIV Study Bible footnote for Matthew 4:17; emphasis mine)

It is wise to develop a plan for healing.

(It is also wise to develop a plan for rebuilding trust. Forgiving is not the same as trusting again, but that’s a topic for another day.)

So what do you think? 

Does forgiveness leave room for forgetting AND remembering?

Revised from a post in November 2012