Day 14 From Repurposed Find to Life Found

Day 14

How do we remember and why do we forget? If I asked you the top 5 things you remember right now, chances are there would be 3 to 2 that are negative memories. You’d be doing well actually to have those odds. Most often, people remember only negative memories. Why is that? Emotional memories have a greater probability of being remembered. Good or bad. It’s just the way our brain works. With new experiences we tend to amend and not protect past memories. So for example, when you’ve first had your heart broken. At that moment, it can seem as though you will never get over that person. You cannot imagine your world without them. But, as the saying goes, time heals all wounds. Soon, you forget because you’ve moved on and their memory gets replaced by the next relationship or the next heart break. In Deuteronomy, God tells the Israelites to never forget. He tells them to remind their children about how He saved them, how He lifted them out of their slavery. I’m wondering, do we recall those triumphs in our lives as easily? When we do, do we tell our families about them? Consider what you share with those around you. Chances are, we’re complaining about something or someone. 

Which leads us to the next challenging question, how about when it comes to other people? What are the top 5 things you remember about them? How are those memories driven? If I had to guess it’s based on your experience with that person. Its based on emotions experienced with them. We have colored them a certain way because of our history with them. Hmmm….so you can imagine as we’re trying to grow, as we’re trying to get back to our original design, we have these obstacles to deal with.  You can see how we might have repurposed ourselves based on our memories, events and people.

So much of the research out there suggests that our memories try to teach us how to solve problems. Thus the mice in a maze theory. They remember the way out after several tries. So when we make a record of something in our memory banks, we’re trying to hold on to it for future use. Without realizing it, or maybe with realizing it, we attach a certain attribute, a behavior, an action to a situation and then remember it being good or bad. So consider the hard parts of your journey. Maybe for you its growing up in a dysfunctional home, being in a hard place in your marriage, maybe lack of trust. We tend to move forward coloring other new situations with the old. We remember and apply these things which aren’t always fair to attach to new situations. 

In your quiet time today consider what would it look like if we could reframe our memories? I’m wondering if we tried to discipline ourselves to be more objective as we move through life experience, could we learn to be more fluid, less judging? The reality is we have all gone through something that has changed us in a way that we could never go back to the person we were before. The question is how has it changed you, for better or for worse? Could you be a light for others to get them through that part of their journey? Can we begin to count even the negatives in our lives as triumphs moving forward? Can we consider them teachers and guides along the way and most of all can we remember to tell about them?