And most of them will never be captured by a camera or microphone. And try as we may, we cannot hold on to every one of them. As I get older, I'm very much aware that my memory isn't as sharp as it used to be. And that is painful. I want to be able to recapture the sparkle in my wife's eyes when her quivering lips said, "I do." To remember what it felt like to hear my sons draw a breath and cry for the first time. Every time one of my boys calls me "daddy" my heart smiles. I want to hold onto these things vividly. Not as hazy memories.
It's cruel, I think, that we don't have some sort of digital recording device in our brains that allows us to capture, replay, re-experience.
Or maybe it's grace.
Because there are also moments that I want to erase for all eternity. The way my wife's face changes and tears flow from her beautiful blue eyes when I've said or done something to hurt her. The moment I lost composure upon losing a job that I put way too much value in. The look of fear in my son's eyes when I yelled, perhaps too loudly, at him. The ugly sin moments. Those can be sent to the recycle bin of the mind as far as I'm concerned. But, just as we cannot record and playback those moments we hold dear, we cannot erase the ones we'd like to pretend never happened.
And that, I suppose, is God's way of telling us to make the most of every moment. Every heartbeat is precious...important. Every word we speak, action we take is more than just a moment...it's a piece of our story. And our story is incomplete without the bad as well as the good.
What moments do you wish you could cling to and replay in your heart and mind? Which ones do you wish could be erased from the hard drive of your life?
