Recently, I was sorting through my cardboard recycling, breaking it down to take to the transfer station. As I was tearing apart boxes and flattening our cartons, it struck me how much of my life I could trace back to the remants in the recycling tub.
I found two pizza boxes from the night I took dinner over to a friend’s house and ended up running around in the back yard most of the evening with her two young sons. I folded up a carry-out container from an afternoon meal with a friend from out of town. I locked my keys in the car that day, and our time together took a much different turn than we had planned. There was a Coca Cola box which once housed 12 cans of pop, and it struck me as out of place since I don’t buy or drink cola. Then I remembered it was one of the many items that had been discarded by one of many pedestrians and motorists who mistake my front yard for a trash can. I recycle as much of the refuse as I can, which I figure is better than if they actually had thrown it in a trash can.
This pile of refuge I was sorting through baecame a tangible version of the memories I store in my mind for years, even decades. Every once in a while, I pull them out and run through the stories that have shaped my life. The memories that still have purpose are the ones I recycle, going over the details so I can glean more growth, more gladness.
Some memories were thrown away immediately because they were too embarrassing or too painful. I didn’t try to recycle them; I put them directly into the garbage. I’ll probably run across them again some day in a different package or in a different place. And this time, when I’m through with them, I’ll look for ways to give them a second life.
Some of the memories have been kept too long, however. They’ve been gone over enough, and their beginning to smell. I keep them though, hoping they’ll have a usefulness again someday. Holding on to them seems like the easy thing to do, but the longer I hold onto them the harder it will be so someday let go.
“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.” –Philippians 3:13b-14
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Ted’s Remember Lot’s Wife
i really enjoyed this post Charity…hope you are doing well these days!
Hi! I am a student from Singapore and I would just like you to know that your post on the 12th of July 2007 was used as our comprehension passage in our English Language Examination today! 🙂
I’ll never look at my recycling quite the same way again…sorry to be late to post a comment!
We’re missing you.
Today, I’m thinking about recycling our Farm Bill. Well, maybe revamping is a better word. I even called some senators. That surprised me a bit, but I thought it was only fair since I was encouraging others to do so by tomorrow. (on Seedlings)
Jenn — I love your comment about other people throwing their garbage into our lawns. I hadn’t made that connection when I mentioned it in the post. You’re right. We do drag our memories, both good and bad, into our relationships with others.
Ted — In a very real way, our memories help shape who we are. I think this is one of the tragedies of dementia or Alzheimer disease: a loss of self. However, you are right that we need to submit these all to the Holy Spirit, let him glean good from them for our lives.
Thanks,LL. I hope I am back for a while. All kinds of things keep popping up in my life this summer!
I think you’re right about the role of writing. I usually deal with any unresolved memories there. Maybe that’s why I seem to be struggling now, because I am not doing much writing. (I REALLY need to be more disciplined!)
Stacy — As someone who usually errs on the side of focusing on the future (and worrying about it), I have been amazed at myself lately that I am longing so nostalgically for a past that probably didn’t really exist as I imagine it. Yes, this would be the perfect distraction for Satan to use.
Erin — I think you’re on to something in how we use our memories. If they do have purpose, it’s to be composted back to dirt rather than adorning our lives like flowers. When I struggle in hanging onto memories, it usually means I have a wrong view of the past.
Charity, I just linked to your post (finally).
I like this. Also, I was thinking that there’s got to be something metaphorical about other people throwing their own rubbish (memories) into other people’s lawns. Why do they/we (?) DO that?
In response to Erin’s comment: I have similar feelings toward my early writing. (And some of my current writing, quite frankly.) But I hang onto it because in the cringing, hopefully I regain a little humility. It seems to me that in my case, just the fact of cringing reveals that same old tendency all over again to think that NOW I really AM spiritually mature, whatever, blah blah. And if I manage to realise I’m thinking that, maybe it’ll take me down a peg or two.
Very thought provoking, Charity!
Yes, to push them down or try to get rid of them, sometimes that almost seems to defeat us, because at times we can be so focused on that.
We have to know they’re there, and seek God’s grace in forgiveness and in his work towards restoration and reconciliation.
I think of Miroslav’s excellent, challenging book: The End of Memory: Rememberin Rightly in a Violent World.
Yes, we have to in a sense learn to relax and rest, while continuing, hopefully by the Spirit and the Word in community in Jesus, continue to grow in letting go and moving on.
I think this is one thing I love about writing. It’s a chance to get the memories out there, in grace or in goodbye.
(Glad to hear your thoughts again. I always miss you when you’re gone.)
Charity,
This was a great illustration! I immediately thought of all the drippy, sappy poetry I wrote in high school. The kind that starts out, “They just don’t understand our love…” blah, blah, blah. 🙂
Most people save their early writing in order to draw inspiration from it in later years, but I truly cringe anytime I go back and read through the self-inflating, self-gratifying, self-focused stuff I wrote as a teen. I’d even say it was tinged with contempt. gulp. I recall how mature I thought I was- spiritually, relationally, emotionally, academically- across the board.
Probably time to throw those old poems into the recycle bin (after they’ve been well shredded, of course!). I pray Jesus has thrown those old attitudes into the bin too.
* A nice tangent to this is that a lot of consumer waste can be composted and returned to the earth to function as a growth medium. In the same way, I think a lot of the “waste” of my own life (see above) can be added to the spiritual soil around my own feet and used to help me grow. In God’s economy, everything is reuseable.
What was that conversation in the Screwtape Letters? The one where Wormwood was telling his nephew how to deal with Christians? I CAN’T REMEMBER now. But that’s what this post reminded me of. Getting us to focus on the past or the future, instead of meeting Christ in the present, because that is where we meet Him. In the here and now.
Great post. And you are so kind to pick up after others. I would be so frustrated.
Blessings!