remembering: as healing

I open my phone to the camera roll and scroll back three months. A block of shots from a walk around the Big Thicket with Chase and Linus, photos from a spontaneous dinner with the family, a few snapshots of a dog park visit with a friend and a drop by the fire department to see dad. Small but significant reminders that I am more than my current reality, and still a (semi) participating, living, breathing human on the planet. This was my rhythm for a good while before surgery.

Prior to this most recent operation in February, the function of my body had slowed to crawl. I counted it a successful day if I was capable of feeding the pup and hooking up to my infusion. That low bar was the win. And it took all energy and fortitude I could gather to check those two small boxes. So as a practice and habit of sanity, my camera roll became a sanctuary of remembering. While in bed and feeling less than a full human, I would scroll through reminders of another Jana who felt very far from the unshowered weary version currently in charge. I would look at pictures of magic Disney trips, I watched videos from days when we loaded up Linus for a destination-less drive in the car, I pulled up memories of meals cooked and birthday parties attended, each small square a piece of me, broken off by the sharpness of life. I began remembering.

We have an endless possibility of things that dis-member us. Moments where we feel absolutely taken apart. A harsh word from a critic, or even more damaging, one from a friend. The unraveling of a relationship. Unexpected failure of a body function. Often it is more simple than that, a mundane routine that sandpapers us down into a lesser version of our full selves. Both intensity and lull can try and tell us that this current reality in our line of vision is the whole of us. These things slowly undo, leaving us feeling that the narrowness of our right now is the big picture.

Re-membering is a surgery, a stitching, a putting back together. Scattered parts of our full selves are brought in and attached. When I remember something, I pull it from being obsolete, filed away in a dark drawer. It is given life again, color, memory and scent. It breathes again. Remembering is an act of healing. It is a practice that reminds us our immediate is not our ultimate.

As beautiful as it is to be given a fuller view of our own selves, we are also able to remember in ways that reach past us. My one story is good and hard and complicated and wonderful. Still, what this life and this world is capable of doing (or undoing in us) can feel like more than what our individual stories could ever possibly hold or make right.

The craftsmanship of Jesus was in remembering for renewal. He built fresh things out of the old ways, he saw a path forward in light of the places he and those before him had walked. Jesus pointed to what had been as he remarkably made something fantastic and new. Jesus was able to look at what was in front of him through a lens of possibility. Death into life, darkness shifted towards light, weakness became strength. For all of the very good and very hard parts of my personal history that come together to make up and fold out into the fullness of my life, I am invited into an even grander re-membering.

For me, being part of the story of Jesus is an invitation to reach back and pull from a goodness and grace that is not just a patching up but a new garment. My own history can mend a few of the places I feel ripped open, but this is fabric, material, and supplies for something I didn’t even know was possible. I work so hard so many days to get back to a better version of myself that I have experienced along the way. I keep forgetting my own little life is not the limiting source of what I am able to draw from to be made whole.

Given to those in the Christian faith, communion is our practice of re-membering. Instead of a camera roll, Jesus uses carbs and wine (genius) to jolt our taste buds into a state of memory. When we bite into fresh hot bread, it is to signal our forgetful brains that we are not the sustaining source. And when rich wine hits the tongue, we talk to our hearts about grace, forgiveness, and redemption. He said to do this often because he knew our propensity for dismemberment. He saw all of the ways we’d get taken apart, and he knew we would need something much bigger than our own story to be put back together.

When the noise of my now feels loud, I have a standing invitation to reach back and be reminded of my place in this bigger narrative being rolled out. My own full life is more than this immediate moment. And when I feel stuck in dead, dark, weak places, I can pull from the wild and wonderful story of all love and goodness becoming a real human who opened up a restored way of being a person in this world. When I really allow my heart and imagination to wrap around that, I am not just stitched up, I am made new.