Blessed Forgetfulness

 I just started watching a new series starring Samuel L. Jackson called "The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray." Jackson's elderly, dementia-ridden character is offered a treatment that will allow him to remember everything that has ever happened to him.

 . . . and let's stop right there with that striking idea.

EVERYTHING. Everything that has ever happened to you. Do you want to remember everything that has ever happened to you? 

Sweet Jesus, I do not. There is a blessing in forgetfulness.

In a short article I read many years ago, an editor wrote about his mother's dementia and what a remarkably pleasant person she had become. Apparently, she had suffered a lot in her life and had many resentments that built up and made her a difficult woman to be around. But when she lost those memories, she found joy in life again, and others found joy in her as well.

There is a blessing in forgetfulness, people.

I do not want to remember everything that ever happened to me. There were some very embarrassing moments of my life that I don't need to return to my consciousness and rouse up my insecurities again. There are shameful things I did that are better left in the dustpan of my history. I'm sure people whom I love (and people whom I didn't) said and did things that hurt me which I've gotten over and forgotten and don't need to have rehashed.

Now, of course, some of those memories I could remember if I sit and try to think about them. There are some things that are essentially lost to our memory and other things that are simply tucked away securely where they cannot do active damage. That's one of the skills we learn as we mature, I suppose: we choose the pains we need to "forget" and train ourselves to let them go. And when we don't learn to do that, we suffer the consequences and probably pay a lot of therapy bills.

In Jeremiah 31:34, God says, "I will forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more." I've heard a lot of strict biblical literalists do some crazy acrobatics trying to make this work into their theology. I think it's helpful to remember that in scripture, God is trying to make himself known to us when he is essentially beyond our knowing. When he describes himself through the biblical writers, he ends up anthropomorphized to a degree -- they explain unexplainable qualities in the best way they can, in terms of what, in our known experiences, those qualities are like. Whatever God actually does mentally with our sins, I doubt that they are erased entirely from his mind. I suspect it's more like what I did with the mean comment a high school friend said to me: I forgave her for it (eventually) and tucked it away somewhere in the recesses of my brain where it wouldn't show up and interfere with our relationship.

And this is where I come back to the Big Hairy Audacious Command that God gave us to be like him -- to forgive others the same way he has forgiven us. Sigh . . .

I've had some BIG forgiving work required of me in the last few years. I knew I needed to forgive. I wasn't so sure about forgetting; I'm still working on some of that. But to my pleasant surprise it comes easier all the time. When I choose relationship over resentment, I'm able to tuck those memories away. I can't stop them from affecting me entirely; they may always shape who I am to a degree. But I'm able to move forward in a healthy way and be happy. I'm happy.

And I'm grateful. Cuz, friends, there is a blessing sometimes in forgetfulness.