Remembering the Tough Stuff
Note: I was blessed to be asked to preach and give four lectures at Bay View Michigan Association, a Chautauqua community, from July 24th through the 28th, 2022. The sermon title is “Remembering the Tough Stuff” and the lectures are entitled: Dissociative What?, Pathways to Recovery, Is Forgiveness the Goal?, and Let It End Here (prevention). I will post one of these offerings each month from August through November. Today’s post is the sermon delivered on July 24, 2022. ~ Lyn
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Isaiah 40:27-31 (NLT)
O Jacob, how can you say the Lord does not see your troubles? O Israel, how can you say God ignores your rights? Have you never heard? Have you never understood? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of all the earth. He never grows weak or weary. No one can measure the depths of his understanding. He gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless. Even youths will become weak and tired, and young men will fall in exhaustion. But those who trust in the LORD will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.
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Lyn Barrett preaching at Bay View Michigan Association on July 24, 2022, about “Remembering the Tough Stuff.”
When I picked up my children from school, I recognized them, but I couldn’t remember how much I loved them. When I sat with my therapist for the first time, I couldn’t remember scenes from my childhood, only shadows and ominous clouds. When I tried to take my life, I couldn’t remember who I was even though I knew my name.
Remembering defines us. It tells us who we are, and I wasn’t very good at that. On the one hand, I thought I remembered everything; on the other hand, I had difficulty remembering much of anything. Eventually, I was diagnosed with multiple personality disorder, now called dissociative identity disorder, whose primary symptom is amnesia brought on by chronic childhood trauma. That’s a longer story and we’ll touch on it more fully this week in the lectures. Suffice it to say that the diagnosis was hard, but it put me on the path to remembering what I needed to remember in order to heal. By the grace of God, here I am in beautiful Bayview MI at the age of 75, happy as a clam and integrated as all get out. But it wasn’t always that way because I couldn’t remember.
Tidying Up Our Memory
Sometimes our lack of memory is benign and related to the fallibility of memory. You all have stories to tell of how you, your sister, and your mother have different memories of your brother’s wedding. Or how we listened to a Sunday morning sermon and each of us came away with a different message. Cognitive memory changes based on many factors. But sometimes our lack of memory, or distorted memory, is related to past experiences that have rattled us so much that forgetting seems to be the most adaptive strategy.
It’s human nature to tidy up the past so we don’t have to relive the times where we failed, the times that embarrassed us or set us back, or the times that wounded us. We may remember what was good and pretend that what was bad wasn’t really so bad. We avoid the difficult memories with everything we’ve got so we can manage life today with as much positive memory as we can muster. But repainting the past isn’t always a conscious choice; sometimes, it’s survival. In his groundbreaking book The Body Keeps the Score, psychiatrist and trauma researcher Bessel van der Kolk calls it “the unbearable heaviness of remembering.”
Remembering as Spiritual Discipline
Yet remembering our difficult past is a spiritual discipline rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures and perpetuated by Jewish tradition. For instance, the feast of Sukkot (Soo kowt) remembers wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. Hanukah remembers the recapture and rededication of the Temple after war with Syria. Purim (Poor em) remembers the narrow escape from genocide by the king of Persia. Holocaust Remembrance Day vows to never forget the holocaust of the 20th century. These are difficult, traumatic memories that would be easy to relegate to the back burners of the mind, but Judaism calls its adherents to do the opposite, to celebrate these days by remembering the traumas they commemorate.
Isaiah’s Story
Second Isaiah does the same in today’s scripture when he calls the Israelites to remember their past. You might have thought the prophet would cut them a break since they were exiled in Babylon at the time this passage was written. Their spiritual energy was focused on survival rather than exploring historical facts. I want you to have a sense of what it was like back then.
Imagine. Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar and his armies had demolished the nation, devastated their holy city and destroyed their holy temple.
Imagine. The Israelites were a people without a homeland who had just crawled out from under 100 years of brutal Assyrian oppression, and before that slavery to the Egyptians, and before that constant threat by the Canaanites.
Imagine. The Jewish people have a tragic history of trauma that could have easily diminished their spirit and left them an insignificant tribe in the annals of history. Its understandable that the people cried out in anguish, “Don’t you see our troubles, Lord? Why are you ignoring us?”
This lament rings throughout the Hebrew Scriptures to this very day in communities around the world, God’s people crying out of trauma, “Don’t you see our troubles, Lord? Why are you ignoring us?” Whether we are survivors of war-torn countries, veterans who witnessed the atrocities of war, adult survivors of neglect or abuse, victims of rape, domestic violence, addictions, violent crime, or family dysfunction, members of marginalized-discriminated-against communities, or whether we are survivors of none of these but are witnesses to them in the world around us, we all have something we’re carrying. “Don’t you see our troubles, Lord? Why are you ignoring us?”
Isaiah’s Dilemma
So, sitting in the middle of exile surrounded by country men and women in despair, Isaiah had a choice to make.
He could walk away from the memories his nation carried, he could hide them in his camel sack, he could pretend they were less difficult than they really were and leave the past behind, OR he could challenge his countrymen to look squarely into the face of their traumas.
Isaiah could conveniently forget about a whole generation enslaved only to wander four decades looking for a safe place to lay their heads, OR he could help them weave those memories into a tapestry of legacy.
Isaiah could stuff the stories of the people who, by all rights, had little reason to affect the course of human history, OR he could remind them that just because they were God’s chosen people didn’t mean their path would be easy, that sometimes it would be hard, and sometimes it would be downright unbearable.
The Single Most Important Thing
When Elie Wiesel (Vee sel), the Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, he said, “Memory has become a sacred duty of all people of good will.” Wiesel spent a year in Auschwitz Concentration Camp during the Second World War and watched his father, mother, and two sisters die. Yet he emerged from the death camps convinced that remembering was the single most important thing he could do for the rest of his life.
The memory of evil will serve as a shield against evil, he said. The memory of death will serve as a shield against death.For Wiesel, to forget the tragedy of the holocaust meant to force the victims to die a second death. If to forget forces victims to die again, I would add that to remember is to breathe into victims new life.
Isaiah’s Choice
So what did Isaiah do? He didn’t choose the easy way, he chose the hard way, the wilderness, the narrow gate, the darkened path because, in every instance, Isaiah called the Israelites to remember. He reminded them of the God who gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless. He reminded them of the God who gives hope to the faint and promise to the weary. He reminded them of the God who time after time, tragedy after tragedy, trauma after trauma, raised them up on eagles’ wings not to limp along, not to stagger along, not to hobble along, but to soar along.
Transforming Trauma
Here’s the pearl hidden inside the oyster. When we remember alongside the God who saves, we heal. When we reveal the hidden secrets and make room for new memories, we get stronger. When we speak the truth to power alongside other faithful people, we find our voice. When we rely on the God who raises us on eagles’ wings, we fly like the Israelites of the Hebrew scriptures who went on to become great minds, vision casters, builders, caretakers, artists, writers, musicians, leaders, and wisdom bearers who carried their compassion into the diaspora to every corner of the earth.
God invites us to bring our memories out of hiding into the light of day so the power of God’s promise can do God’s work. It’s like bleaching the stains out of old rags – they start out dirty and come out looking sparkling clean. God invites us to ride the wave of memory to the shore and leave the raging ocean behind, to walk gently through the sand into the wide expanse of beach. God invites us to speak our truth clearly and unequivocally, so the scales fall from our eyes, and the eyes of this generation, and the next generation, and the next, and the next, and the next.
Letting the tough, hidden memories into our conscious awareness creates a whole new landscape where we are compelled to speak out like Elie Weisel, where we are called to ministry that transforms the trauma we experienced, where we are convicted that it won’t happen on our watch, where we are driven to make a difference for those who are vulnerable – the children, the poor, the marginalized, and all of us who’ve been hurt from life’s wounds. With each drop of memory comes transformation, slowly at first, but as it gains momentum it changes us and the people who remember with us. When we remember, we change ourselves and, together, we change the world.
God of Memory
Islam tells the story of a despondent man who sought a simple discipline to help him hang on, and the prophet Mohammed responded by saying, “Keep your tongue moist with the remembrance of Allah.” Buddhism teaches that cultivating memory helps to define who we are. Story telling grounded in memory is an art form in Native American spirituality. In the New Testament, Jesus sat with his disciples the night before he died and instituted the Lord’s Supper so his disciples would never forget the most horrifying and transformative moment in his ministry.
Our God is the God of memory, the God of healing, the God of transformation, the God who changes trauma into talent, fear into faith, chaos into creation, and uncertainty into a way forward. Memory is a two-edged sword that cuts a path through our wilderness. On the one hand, we remember our trauma. On the other, we remember our God who was with us through it all, is with us right now, and will be with us in the future no matter what life throws our way. No longer must we cry out, “Don’t you see our troubles, Lord? Why are you ignoring us?” Instead, we join our voices with Isaiah and proclaim: The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of all the earth. Those who trust in God will find new strength. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint. And by the grace of God, they will soar high on wings like eagles.
Let us pray.
Lord, help us remember, even the tough stuff, especially the tough stuff. Walk with us through the wilderness into a new day. With our memories, create within us a tapestry of shalom, wholeness, authenticity, peace, and joy. Shower us with your love that we may find purpose in our past, peace in our present, and vision for our future. Give us wings to fly.
Amen.
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DW Subscriptions
DW moved to a subscription-based group at the beginning of June. We invited you to use June, July, and August to submit your subscription for $10 monthly, $100 annually, or full scholarship (no questions asked). As we enter August, we want to remind you that anyone who has not subscribed by the end of this month will be removed from the workshop and activity email list (not the newsletter). If you haven’t subscribed yet but are still attending workshops, go to our Dissociative Writers website and sign up now!
Group Easy Community Platform
DW has decided to move to a community platform called Group Easy that offers us a secure way to email one another, post calendar events, store organizational documents, upload and download writing submissions, and more. Sometime in the month of August, subscribers will receive an email invitation you to join Group Easy. We encourage you to take advantage of the invitation. We will offer brief tutorials at the end of each workshop to help people become comfortable with Group Easy. We hope all subscribers will sign on sometime in the month of August or September. By October, we will transition fully to Group Easy and give it a two month trial. At the end of November, we will decide if Group Easy is serving our needs or if we wish to terminate our use of their platform. We want to assure everyone that we will offer as much support, including personal tutorials if needed, to help people become comfortable with this new community opportunity!
Dissociative Writers Meeting
DW will meet on Monday, August 8th at 6:30 pm Eastern. Topics for discussion include the 2023 anthology, workshop proposal on writing as healing to Healing Together sponsored by An Infinite Mind, and our transition to the Group Easy community platform. All subscribers are welcome. Please use the traditional workshop link to join the meeting.
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By the grace of God, we will soar high on wings like eagles.
Paraphrase of Isaiah 40:31a
Lyn