I started going to therapy again recently. I’m still not coping with my difficult memories from childhood. One of the things I am afraid of is that my memories will overwhelm me and leave me broken.  My last session we did an exercise called the memory container to help me overcome that fear. 

A memory container can be something as simple as a Tupperware container. Just so it has a lid and can be opened and closed.  The idea is for the container to hold difficult memories until they can be processed and to control the flow of the memories. This has given me freedom. For the first time I feel like I can remember without being overwhelmed.

As I began to work on the concept of a container to hold my memories it was like I walked into a meadow of butterflies. My passing stirred the memories and they filled the air.  All kinds of memories floated around me; happy, sad, angry, terrifying. At first, I thought the difficult memories would be ugly, some dark warped thing but all my memories are beautiful, some are broken, some wounded but the memory is beautiful, not the thing that happened, that was bad, but my memory is beautiful . It makes me who I am. God’s grace redeems my memories and helps me see their beauty.

A Tupperware container is a fine functional container but I wanted a different kind of a container. I wanted a container that would hold my memories even after I have remembered and changed the emotional context of the memory. I want a place where my memories can be safe and free, not to organize and catalog my memories but to treasure them and allow them to stay and be remembered or to fade into the fabric of my soul and become a part of who I am.

My memory chest is a small chest I can carry in front of me with no difficulty.  It is wrapped in sky and edged with ebony wood. The top is domed and the wood wraps around the edges and across the opening between the lid and the bottom. The sky part of the chest is as changeable as the Kansas sky, sometimes brilliant blue like a summer’s day, sometimes grey with thunderheads and slashing rain, sometimes clear and dark with a million stars.

 The chest opens only to my hand and when opened it unfolds into a doorway bordered by ebony wood. Step through the doorway into the mansion where my memories live. Not organized, not catalogued, but free to stay or float away.  There are many rooms but the two that help me remember and reclaim my memories are the warehouse and the sorting room.  The warehouse has infinite shelves that reach into the dimness of distance. Memories wait on the shelves to be brought into the sorting room.  Some wait patiently or are silent and others clamor, wanting to be remembered. 

For now, I am slow remembering. I have taken the first difficult memory and am remembering. It came with two happier memories so I am remembering the three of them together.  I think the happier memories help give the difficult memory context.  Another difficult memory is trying to surface but the memory container has allowed me to tell it to wait.  It is almost like the memories are alive and the memory is impatient but it waits its turn in the queue until I claim the memory I am working on.

I am not rushing this process. I have denied my memories for many years which has given the fear power. It will take time. My goal is to walk peacefully, gracefully among my memories, difficult or pleasant, and see the world as it is in all its beauty and ugliness. To be able to express the greater truth of God’s love for all his creation. For the first time I feel this goal is reachable.

Heal me O Lord, and I shall be healed;
Save me, and I shall be saved,
For you are my praise.
Jeremiah 17:14

I have had my two little pups for a few weeks now and I love them both but I feel a special affinity with little Tippy. She is afraid of everything and yet works so hard to be happy and brave.  The slightest noise will send her scurrying into her kennel where she crouches and stares out with her big eyes. She has the whole world in front of her (metaphorically speaking) and yet spends a lot of her time in the corner of her kennel.  Sometimes if she cannot get to her kennel she will jump up on the couch and squeeze into the corner.  If I touch her, she is a tight little ball of tension and when she sees the opportunity, she explodes off the couch and into her pen.

I have an advantage over Tippy. I know there is a big beautiful world out there. A big beautiful, scary and dangerous world that makes me want to live safe in my own cage.  It’s too hard to process my painful memories and I push them away. I live inside my little box of a world and let my actions sabotage my chance at a full and beautiful life. Why choose to feel when I am safe inside my little cage?

Fear keeps me hunkered down in the cage that I have built for myself.  I refuse to feel the pain that comes with the memories. But this makes me numb and now I cannot feel the joy that is waiting in the world for me because I refuse the pain that comes with being a human being. And I am fragmented into dark corners and eddies of memories that wait to ensnare me and feed my fear. I have chosen numbness and a kind of death instead of aliveness and presence to be awake to what life has given me; both the pain and the joy.

So now I choose again, I choose to step through my fear and feel the pain and the sorrow so I can feel the joy and the happiness. I will honor my body and remember the distressing experiences. I will have faith that I can survive the difficult feelings. I know that the pain will move, once I release it. It will pass through and recede and on the other side of the pain, I will be whole and alive to be who God meant me to be. I will be able to fully connect to that spirit within me that calls me to create. I will welcome the difficult and the delightful and fully feel all that makes me who I am meant to be. To become fully human and lettered in the language of the heart and strong in the face of the pain that life sends my way.

If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me. – Psalm 139:8-10

I know I cannot do this by myself but I am blessed; with friends who love me with all my humanness and frailties; with God who promises and indeed is with me even through the darkest times; and with my pups who love me in spite of the fear they have learned in this world. And I will honor my painful memories because they are a part of what makes me who I am, they make me afraid sometimes but they also make me human and remind me that we all carry our humanness with us and all God’s creatures need understanding, empathy, and compassion.

I love early spring flowers. The daffodils in my yard were here when we bought the house over 30 years ago and come up faithfully every spring. The crocus are fairly recent and are even earlier than the daffodils, sometimes even through the snow. They are a reminder to me that there is beauty in the world even through the tough spots.