Enough Good Memories

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith From a Place of Winter For the Years of Winter…

Rebecca Ninke, Lutheran author and pastor, was snowed in by the big blizzard, and then a bug treated the GI tracts of her and her children with considerable rudeness. In the midst of that, she had one of those writer deadlines. But rather than wishing her life away, wishing to get far enough ahead that the pukey days of infections and deadline were over, she decided to wish for LAST spring.

I used to wish my life away. Half of it, anyway. For a long time, we barely scraped by financially. Along about the fifteenth of the month, I would start wishing for the end of the month, so I’d get my pay check. Finally I realized, “This is no good. I’m wishing half of my life away just because I have no money. The end of the month will come no sooner with my wishful thinking, and I’m losing the present.”

I changed my ways. We still ate Spam and beans, but I enjoyed it more.

I know all about the need to live in the present and how we can’t live in the past. I think, though, that Rebecca is on to something. Wish for a day before blizzards and epizootics. That’s what memory is for.

It is easy in the cold and snow of winter to waste the days away wishing forward to spring. It is better just to enjoy the days of winter through the joy of memory, wishing backward instead of forward, warming winter by remembering the days of spring and summer and autumn.

Daughter Katie recently gave me a nice quote from Jennifer Lawler: “The sign of a life well spent is enough good memories to get you through to the end.”

JRMcF

{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}

(If you would prefer to receive either “Christ In Winter” or “Periwinkle Chronicles” via email, just let me know at jmcfarland1721@charter.net, and I’ll put you on the email list.)