The Art of Unforgetting

Disney is always my first choice for movies (yep—even on date night). If you haven’t yet watched “Finding Dory,” I highly recommend it. For those unfamiliar with the plot, a young blue tang with “short-term remembry loss” gets separated from her parents and crosses the ocean to find them. Pippa and I enjoyed a viewing last week. As the story developed, I increasingly identified with Dory and was struck by the profound impact of having my spiritual condition represented visually.

Here’s a day in the life of Kassie: I wake up, pray, and then forget God until, at some point, He reminds me He’s still there, waiting for me to come back around to reality with Him at the center. This continues intermittently until I fall asleep at night. And then the process repeats the next morning. I’m not sure what’s normal for humans; I’m only familiar with my experience. But this can’t be how life is supposed to be, right? Isn’t it natural (at least for believers) to carry a sense of God’s Person and presence?

What ends up happening is that, despite my knowing all of the biblical facts and how to communicate them, I function largely like an orphan. I’m on my own. I’d better shape up and keep up, because it all depends on me. I’ve got to keep everything under control. No one else will fight for me. You can probably imagine the mountain of baggage that results. Basically, the opposite of the fruit of the Spirit: instead of love, there’s selfishness. Instead of joy, frustration. Instead of peace, all kinds of anxiety. And on and on.

 The weight of spiritual amnesia crushes me, if only for a few minutes at a time, and shame dogs my stumbling steps. “What kind of friend forgets you exist several times a day?!” And, “He can’t matter that much to you if you keep forgetting Him.” And, “How prideful can you be, actually letting the awareness of your need for God persistently slip away?”* The truest thing about me—Who loves me, Who saves me, Who waits for me and works in me and why that matters—so, so often slips out of view, and my soul cries out in grief. 

So what’s a girl to do when she can’t remember anything that matters? Glad you asked. I’m participating in a course right now designed to walk me through the nitty gritty, and I have come armed with ideas. Here are some of my favorites:

• Beg God to invade my consciousness. He relishes being welcomed into the mess, and nothing short of His Spirit can change me at the core.
• Ask seven friends to each claim a day of the week on which to text me some encouragement, a prayer, or a quick reality check. Once I’m over my horror of asking for help, who knows what the Lord might have planned? 
• Set alarms on my phone throughout the day, holy interruptions urging me to stop and reset my heart.
• Begin each morning in Scripture. This one feels obvious, but saturating my first moments with the Word of God is a beautiful must.
• Keep a soundtrack for my soul in the background. There’s a song for every mood, and even when I’m not actively rehearsing the words, they’re filling up deep gaps within me. As leaky as my memory is, I need to constantly stuff my brain with truth and beauty.
• Leave faith-building books in strategic locations. My favorite chair? Ooh, great spot. Bedside table, check. Toilet? Not gonna lie—that would be weird. 
• Scatter a few meaningful visual prompts around the house. Every time I catch myself remembering the Lord, I can move that prompt to a different area. (This guards me from growing used to seeing the same thing in the same place, and it adds a physical element to a mental exercise.)
• If I will be out and about, I can Sharpie a simple shape on my hand. Every time I glance down and notice it, I will be prompted to circle back to the Lord.
• Absorb Brother Lawrence’s short classic, The Practice of the Presence of God, every month for a year. Rather than reading widely for information, I want to try reading deeply for transformation.
• Set a new memory-jogging wallpaper on my phone weekly. Because technology is such a brain-eraser for me, keeping reminders fresh is crucial.
• Tie my physical rhythms to spiritual rhythms. I can ponder a hymn while I wash dishes, pray while I get my steps in, or invite God’s presence when I buckle up. 
• Enlist key players. A common playground for my forgetfulness is trying to problem-solve alone, much of which occurs during weekly family meetings. I can ask Riley to lovingly nudge me if he notices any typical red flags. 

My hope is that such a varied approach, practiced on a regular basis, will help create new pathways in my brain: unforgetful thoughts. How glorious it would be to spend day after day operating in a steady awareness of who and Whose I am—not so that I might live in a self-centered way, but to finally be confident in what’s true. Even if spiritual amnesia is my thorn in the flesh, allowed by God to keep me desperately dependent on Him for the rest of my life, I’ll outgrow my need for such a tether in heaven. So the future is filled with hope, and I can get down to the work of the moment. Which I will do … as soon as I remember what it is.

At the end of “Finding Dory,” there’s a scene that sets me free. (Spoilers, but hey, it came out in 2016.) The main character has gone to unbelievable lengths to reunite with her parents only to receive the news of their presumed death. Dory is devastated and disoriented, on the brink of losing herself entirely. All of a sudden, she notices a shell… and then another… and then another. She follows what turns out to be a trail, completely absorbed in the moment. Cresting an overlook, the camera zooms out, and we can see maybe twenty lines of shells, radiating outward, all leading to one spot: Dory’s (living!) parents, their fins full of more shells to extend the paths so that their special girl might eventually find her way home to them.

Even in the depths of my forgetfulness, I’m never once forgotten. Every instant I remember who and Whose I am is a gift of sheer grace. The memory prompts I listed are shells, tiny attention-grabbing roads that will lead me back to my Abba’s house. Each return is His own longing. He doesn’t berate me or roll His eyes or heave a giant sigh, wishing I weren’t so broken. His hands are full of shells, and His eyes are filled with love. I can rest knowing that no matter how far I go or how long I forget, He will keep leading me back home to His heart.

*I believe these sentiments are a mixture of my own inner critic and the enemy of my soul. While the Holy Spirit does in fact shepherd me toward health, He never bullies me.