Put me in remembrance; let us argue together. (Isaiah 43:26).
I used to be cool. I guess I still am but I used to be, too. Surprisingly, shockingly, this does not come up a lot with my kids. They recognize me as tumbling out of bed, fumbling with teacher meetings and lunch money, or tossing back Chick-fil-A fries as we have another meal in another car ride to another practice on another day. My kids see me go, go, going, but not often do I stop and let them hang out with Margot – the girl who committed her first felony at age 5, or the woman who dressed up as her identical twin sister for Halloween and wreaked havoc at sister Caroline’s college. So, how can I set the record straight?
Recently, my husband and I decided we were tired of reading the Junie B. Jones series, absolutely through with the Dogman books, and too tired to walk through Harry Potter with our kids at bedtime. Instead, we started laying down in bed and telling stories to them about ourselves when we were their age, you know, when we were really, really cool. The old witching hour has now turned into the bewitching hour. How do we want them to know us better tonight? Patrick and I find ourselves thinking about which story are we going to razzle and dazzle them with. Is it going to be when Patrick pretended to know karate for a kindergarten show and tell, and “performed” for his whole class? Or is it when 6-year-old Caroline and I got into a fist fight outside the Pizza Hut over who got to hold the door open for our parents?
Surprisingly, shockingly, these stories we share and tell our children are deepening our relationships and giving them a bigger picture of who we are even if the present moment tells them differently. The same is true about Scripture. The word of God reminds us not just of who we truly are, but who he truly is. It looks past what we have done as we look to the past to see all that he has done. Scripture is not so much a love letter to us, but a diary of God’s heart bearing ours.
There are days where parts of me feel so unknowable, but I read Fear not, for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name, you are mine. There are weeks where all of me feels unreachable and untethered, but I hear when you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. There are months when I roll out of bed feeling so woundedly unlovable and useless and yet, and yet, God tells me I gave Egypt as ransom for you, I give men in return for you. These are the daily doses of remembrance that will serve me, you, us, through eternity.
But if I were to stop at the first few verses of Isaiah 43, feel-good and replenishing as they are, I would miss how the Lord is moving me onward in body and posture. While I am still welcome to cling to his chest in the water and fire, he is also asking me, while still in his arms, to turn out and to see, Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert. The God we follow knows a thing or two about desert wanderings and future wonderings. As I keep pouring over his words, I feel the Lord pouring out new offerings – but, it was not until this past summer that the ending of this chapter finally hit me right between the eyes and square in the chest. I was sitting in my car before a funeral of a young mother. It seemed cruel that the hardware store was still open, that the grocery store still had customers buying food for dinner, and that the drive to the lake was still packed. Didn’t they know what was happening right down the street? And yet, here we all were, walking into a chapel with no space to grieve with places in our hearts we did not know we had. It was cruel, unfair, unjust, and felt ungodly. My weeping in my filthy car was heard before the Lord as the prophet Isaiah had the nerve to tell me about God, Put me in remembrance; let us argue together.
Arguing with your parents is not just for the teenager, it is for you and me with our Heavenly Father. God does not just want our good words, deeds, and clothing, but our weeping, our gnashing of teeth, our ripped clothes and ash-covered faces. He wants the snot-nose tears, screaming out of fears, and those wordless prayers only the Holy Spirit could muster. God can handle your outbursts, your anger, your questions, your concerns, your life. He is a big boy, he has got this. Do you really think God can handle parting the seas, crossing the Jordan, standing in the fire, and being hung on a cross, but cannot stand your weeping and your angrily sad words? Do you really believe that his outstretched hands on the cross won’t hold you if you voice your questions about your faith and his humanity? I’d argue that he can’t hold you unless you do. Remember who God is and come to him, bringing songs of weeping and offerings of questions, and he will give you something better and more beautiful in exchange, himself.
— Margot Cooney