One Thing Worth Remembering

My shower has two sliding doors. In these quarantine days when I hate to say it, showering isn’t a daily activity, I find myself forgetting the order the doors shut. Standing outside, the door with the handle is the door, naturally, that opens the shower. But standing on the inside, when natural intuition says the door with the handle shuts you in, it proves a false hope. In my forgetfulness, my attempt finds it sliding back into its place. The same door that lets you in is the same door that closes you in. I don’t even know what the other door is for.

I stood there the other day, after trying and failing twice to shut the door, trying to remember the last time I was here. Was it Saturday? Who knows? Who cares? I don’t go many places these days and I live in a house with three young boys. I’m by far the least smelly.

Then my mind wandered to the other things I forgot. That email at work I meant to respond to. The request in my personal inbox with an invitation to join a conversation on a podcast. The sermon prep I meant to get a jump-start on. The cheese Danish left somewhere in the back of my car for the church breakfast months ago. The older I get, and the more I do, the more I forget.

Inevitably, guilt sets in. People are probably mad at my forgetfulness. They probably don’t want me on the podcast anymore. The cheese Danish was probably delicious. By this point, I’m ready to pray and ask God’s forgiveness and help. So much of my life is unintentional forgetfulness. Don’t even get me started with the things of God I’ve let slip. The things really worth remembering are the things perhaps most easily forgotten.

In the end, though, somehow most things work out. I’ve never found myself standing inside the shower with an open door wondering what I’m going to do now. I always figure it out. The order of things in the showers of life isn’t worth remembering. But the order of things in the deepest realities of life can’t be forgotten. Forgetful me is not forgotten by the remembering God. I’ve not left his mind even when my mind can’t hold him. In a world with so much that can be forgotten, that’s one thing worth remembering.