What is it you need to remember?

“Hey, Mom! You know it’s been almost 22 years since you went to school here, right?!” my oldest bellows his discovery across the breadth of the rambling porch at my college sorority house. There is a young sister perched in one of the old rocking chairs, her books and phone scattered about on the painted cracks of the floor. She smiles over at us, and I feel as though I should be using a cane to navigate the steps. Wasn’t that just me, there on that porch?

The boys run ahead, proclaiming to whoever is listening that they will not, NOT be going into a house full of girls no matter how cool I tell them the inside of this house is. The wind whips the sun’s shadows through the porch eaves and carries with it this distinct smell of sorority house lunch.

 Suddenly, I am 19 and collecting the mail from the old mailbox on my way home from class. The laughter floats through the sparkling Tiffany front doors and I see us there in the pink wallpapered kitchen, our plates piled high with grill cheese and glasses full of lemonade. The faces, the voices and the old house mother who ate cabbage soup for every meal all come into such sharp view that I have to stop and catch my breath. 22 years ago?

The boys and I spend the day on the sidewalks and the pathways of this campus. They ask a steady stream of questions; where are all of the lockers? What if you get lost?

And I see a thousand visions of a girl who grew into herself right under these towering oaks and in the shadows of these ancient buildings.

Remembering has a way of turning our hearts and opening our eyes. Because it isn’t only the big-haired sorority girl I see making her way through the crowded campus. It is Jesus, right next to her. It is the faithfulness of a Father who never let her go. The faithfulness of a Father who revealed himself in such clear ways, who claimed her heart and turned her toward him. Her life today is different because of the Jesus she found in this place. 

And I remember.

“Remember well what the Lord your God did…”(Deut. 7:18). This verse pops right into my head. And it is Moses who wrote this. Moses who implores the Israelites to do it. He says it over and over again during their years in the desert.  He repeatedly recounts the story of their release from Egypt for generations of Israelites. The story of God’s goodness to his hard-hearted people. Remember the Lord.  

And whenever I read those stories I always wonder, what’s the deal with all the ‘remembering’?

What about the next phase? What about what God is going to do next? Why all the looking back? Shouldn’t Moses teach those people to look forward and expect the goodness of God in the new stuff as well? Instead, though, he instructs them with verses like this one. “Be careful that you do not forget the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” (Deut 6:12).

Remember the Lord. Remember what he did for you. Remember. It is the drumbeat that resonates throughout much of the Old Testament. Remember.

 Now I don’t know about you. But this isn’t often what I am inclined to do when I am called forward into one of life’s new seasons. I don’t lean forward into the newness by looking backward. I lean forward longing for assurance that my steps are headed the right way. I lean forward begging God to guide me, to be the light unto my path. I lean forward wanting to know that he goes before me.

“But I already have,” he whispers through the tall leaning of the old oaks on the campus quad. “Remember how I led you here. Remember.”

 And I see her on every corner of this campus; that 19-year-old version of myself. We walk past the old English building as class ends and students flood onto the pathway. 

And she’s there, backpack slung over her shoulder,  sunlight in her eyes, surrounded by laughter and voices of friends.  I watch her talk and laugh, but I remember the fear and the worry. The Shakespeare papers, the biology tests, the need to succeed and control the future. It had nearly pulled her under.  Her head had been packed full of grammar rules and John Donne’s poetry.

But her heart? It had been broken; empty.

And God had mended it during those years. All of those people he had put in her path. The ones who lived out their love for Jesus in real and everyday ways. I let the memory of those days and those faces linger a bit longer. Those days had changed her.

“The Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He has watched over your journey through this vast desert. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you and you have not lacked anything.” (Deut 2:7).  Yes. I catch my breath and watch the scrolling movie reel in my mind. Oh, how he had watched and guided and stood and loved and built that girl. I remember.

And slowly I get it.

Maybe Moses was on to something. This remembering. This retelling of the Lord’s faithfulness has a way of reframing that which is unknown. God knew that the people would forget. He knows that you and I forget; that we stand in unknown places of newness and plain forget.

We forget how he loves us. We forget how he has led us. And we think he isn’t going to show up this time.

He may have seemed so present with us before, but then we get to the new place, the new season, the new challenge and suddenly it seems all up to us. “Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God.” (Deut. 8:11). Moses’ warning rings in my ears.

The boys and I finish our tour and make our way to the minivan. I pass out gum, settle fights and run right into the reality that I am no longer a college coed. I look back and see that girl with the backpack and the light in her eyes bound up the hill and disappear through the door of the beautiful white house. 

And all these years later, I drive out my favorite city in the world with new vision. Sometimes, when the way forward seems unclear, it is the way backward that reminds you how to go.“And surely I am with you always to the end of the age.”  (Matthew 28:20)