All Three Of Them Learned In This Car

The oldest one stalled it eleven times in the church parking lot on a Sunday afternoon in the spring of the year he turned seventeen.

The middle one, who is the careful one, drove it for four months before she would go on the highway, and then went on the highway and was completely fine and did not mention it.

The youngest one put a small dent in the front left in a parking structure and cried, and Priscilla told her it was nothing, and it is still there.

Three children. One car. About four years of a woman in the passenger seat with her hand not quite on the door handle.

And now the transmission is doing something and the number is what it is and everybody agrees that this is the end of the road.

And Priscilla agrees too. That is what makes this worth writing about. She is not arguing. She is not being told anything she disputes.

She simply cannot do it, and she has moved the appointment twice, and she could not explain the second one to her husband because there was no reason for it.

Here is what is actually happening, and she has almost got to it herself, twice, late at night.

She is afraid that when the car goes, some of it goes.

Not the memory exactly. She knows perfectly well she will remember the eleven stalls. What she is afraid of is the access. Because sitting in that passenger seat brings it back in a way that nothing else does, and there is a particular smell in it, and the seat is at the wrong angle from something one of them did, and every time she gets in she is somewhere in those four years for about a second.

And when it goes, that goes, and what is left is a thing she can call up on purpose instead of a thing that arrives.

Her middle daughter, who is twenty three now, said on the phone in August, "Are you okay about the car?"

And Priscilla said, "It's just a car."

And her daughter said, "Mom."

And Priscilla said, "I know," and laughed, and changed the subject.

The access is the thing, not the memory

Let me put down what I am not doing, so nothing has to brace.

I am not going to tell you to keep the car. Everybody in your life has already told you the other thing and I am not going to be the one voice saying the opposite for the sake of it. If a mechanic has told you what a transmission costs, that is the number, and I have nothing to add to it.

And I am not going to tell you it is just a car, because you already said that to your daughter and she did not believe you and neither did you.

What I want to look at is the access.

Because Priscilla has named the real thing without quite hearing herself do it. She is not afraid of forgetting. She is afraid of losing a place that gives it back to her without being asked.

That is a real thing and it is worth taking seriously. Certain objects and certain rooms do that. A person sits in them and four years arrive on their own.

You have been given the remembering rather than the object, and Scripture makes the works of God the thing that is called to mind. Psalm 77 has the psalmist deciding to remember the works of the LORD and His wonders of old, which puts the keeping in the memory rather than in a thing that can rust, and the Holy Spirit is what makes a remembered kindness outlast the room it happened in.

And here is the verse, and what it describes is not that.

I will remember the works of the LORD: surely I will remember thy wonders of old.Psalm 77:11

I will remember.

That is deliberate. That is a decision, made by a man, in a bad night. The whole psalm before that verse is somebody unable to sleep and unable to pray properly and asking whether God has forgotten to be gracious.

And then he turns, and the turning is an act of will, and what he does is set himself to remember on purpose.

Not: I hope it comes back to me. Not: I will go somewhere that brings it back. I will remember.

Which tells you that in Scripture, remembering is work a person does rather than something that happens to them, and that it is available anywhere, including in a bad night with nothing to help.

You are not going to lose those four years, and Scripture describes remembering as deliberate work rather than as something a place does for a person. It is written I will remember the works of the Lord, surely I will remember thy wonders of old, which is a man setting himself to it on purpose, and His Spirit is the one who makes that available in a kitchen as well as in a passenger seat.

You have been relying on a car to do a thing the passage puts in your own hands. Psalm 77 has the remembering chosen rather than triggered, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that a capacity rather than a chore.

Write three of them down

Here is the practical thing, and it is not about the car at all.

Before the appointment, write three of them down.

The eleven stalls. The four months before the highway. The dent and the crying and what you said.

Three, in your own handwriting, on one page. Not a full account. Three specific things with enough detail that somebody reading it in thirty years would be able to see them.

And then put that page where the photographs are.

Because here is what that does. It moves the access out of a vehicle and into an object that is not going anywhere, and it does it before the vehicle goes rather than after, which is the whole point.

A memory that has been written down is not the same as one that has not. It stops depending on a trigger. It becomes a thing that can be handed to a daughter at twenty three, or read out at a wedding, or found in a drawer by somebody in fifty years.

The car could never do any of that.

You have permission to move the years somewhere safer, and no verse anywhere ties a person's history to a possession. Psalm 77 puts the remembering in a man's own deliberate act, and the Spirit of God is what makes three paragraphs on a page a genuine keeping.

And I want to say the tender half, because the moving of the appointment twice is the most honest thing in this account.

That was not avoidance. That was a woman's body telling her that something was not finished, and it was right, and the thing that is not finished is not the decision about the transmission.

The decision is made. She agrees with it. What is not finished is any acknowledgment, anywhere, by anybody, that those four years happened in there.

You were never being sentimental, and Scripture treats the deliberate recalling of what God has done as one of the serious works of a life. It is written surely I will remember thy wonders of old, which puts remembering among the things a person does on purpose and at cost, and His Spirit is what makes that dignity available to four years in a passenger seat.