The Grace Found in Remembering

I sit silently this morning and remember my grandmother's chair.  This was what stood out in her entire living room when I visited her home a few months after she had passed.  This was where she sat and prayed.  Her prayer book constantly before her.  Her table was stacked with notebooks and little lose notes scattered across different colored pens.  I would say she sat there with a constant purpose.  

To remember.  

It is  this same discipline that I suppose I have inherited.  Every morning, I wake up and sit on my chair.  Lean against the desk and leaf through my prayer book, check my email, Twitter and Facebook and remember.  

It is when I remember that I get to slow down and find my eyes slowly opening to see.  Finding my fists slowly unclenching.  It is in remembering that I am able to fully receive the meaning of things that have taken place.  It is in remembering where I find the strength to deal with what is now.  

Right now cupped in my hands is a hope that one day I will really get to learn how to see everything with new eyes.  With Faith's eyes.  Eyes that are free from fear and apprehension.  Eyes that are free from suspicion, distrust and cynicism.  

So much of what I take in around me are filled with that anxiety.  The fear of getting into trouble.  The fear of not ever belonging to the right carrer path. The fear of not being accepted.  The fear of getting into an accident.  The fear of death.  The fear of abandonment.  The fear of not being worth anybody's time.  The fear of not losing enough weight.  The fear of not being healthy.  The fear of not healing fast enough.  

Fear seems to have this constant place in my world and in my thinking that "renewing my mind" day in and day out is not as easy as Romans 12:2 put it.

Do not conform yourself to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect. {New American Standard Version} 

Do not be conformed to this world (this age), [fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs], but be transformed (changed) by the [entire] renewal of your mind [by its new ideals and its new attitude], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His sight for you]. {Amplified Bible}

But that is why this act of Remembering becomes an essential part of how I try to live out a faithful life today.

I am far from perfect.  I suppose it is not even perfection that I should try to be looking into achieving.  Nor should it be achievement that I should seek.  But faithfulness.  Faithfulness to this purpose.  Faithfulness to the Savior.

In my own remembering I play rewind, repeat and forward to the ways the Savior has touched my life.  Rewind, repeat and forward to the truth that He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.   And in this remembering,  how can I not be moved to let go of fear?  Fear becomes such a default behavior to circumstances we find uncertain primarily because we think we need to exert so much effort to control it.  But what happens to the Creed that we say every Sunday?  I believe in God, the Father Almighty.  What is our belief like to the God we claim to be Father Almighty if we cannot even let our fears rest in His mightiness?  

What has our posture been every time we lift our hands up in faith and say "Your Kingdom come and Your Will be done"?  What do we believe about His kingdom and His will?  

Our frailty of mind cannot comprehend the kind of goodness that exists when we simply yield to the outstretched hands of our Savior that hung until His last breath of life.  He died to give us life.  He died to set us free.  And in every Eucharist He commands, "Do this in remembrance of me." Do what Lord?

To remember.  That.  He does not want us to die.  He wants us to live.  And to live without fear because His perfect love will cast it out.


He wanted us to practice remembering because He has grace in store for us there.


Of all the things that I find trouble obeying in my life, I need to make sure that I obey this.  To remember that I have a Savior who did this for me.  And the response to a great deed like that is not fear but gratitude.

In the list of things to improve on, there is many.  But first, may I not let this be crossed out until my mind is completely renewed.  The response to a life saved by the Savior is not fear but gratitude.  Faith. 

Upon Him was the chastisement that made us whole, by His stripes we were healed. {Isaiah 53:3}