To Remember

Well hello, out and about on a crisp September morning, with some of my friends, Canadian geese flying low overhead, honking their welcome to the day. This is Dick Foth with stories from the road and I want to talk to you for just a few minutes about memory, the capacity to remember. The capacity to remember is what gives relationship meaning. That's why diseases like Alzheimer's or dementia are so devastating because it takes away the capacity to remember relationship and relationship is built in no small part on memory. We don't know if we have tomorrow, any of us, but we do know that we have these years and decades passed that shape our story in a lot of ways. So for me, the week of September 11, any given year, captures two things. It captures memories, positive memories and it captures the need to co-memorate, which is to honor and remember something that may not be as exciting as those things that originally created memories. And the reason I say memories and co-memorations is that this week, in September, a lot of years ago, two things happened. One is our fourth child, a son. We had three daughters and then we had a boy. We're born. He was born on September 11, some decades ago. And four days later, my wife Ruth on the 15th had her 30th birthday. So this is a big week for memories. And I want to talk to you about that for just a few moments. And then in the next couple of podcasts, I want to talk about commemorating what, for me, the distinction is September 11 as a birthday, but 9-11 is a time to commemorate. So today, we'll be about those birthdays, if you will. When we knew that we were expecting a fourth child, it was back in the day when you didn't know the sex of the child, so we had to wait to be surprised. And I had this conversation with God, if you will. I love our three daughters, and if we have another daughter, that'll be tremendous. But if there's any possibility that this might be a boy, that'd be really good too. And when we found out in that moment that Chris was born, and I had my speech all prepared, you know, welcome to a man-child in the Promised Land, all that, that went out the window and all I could say was, yes. And I've been so grateful for his life. He is now an adult with three adult children. He and his wife, Tracey, have just their wonderful parents and all of the things that you hope and pray for. There are moments in time when I think about that moment on September 11 when he was born, and other moments that just make me chuckle, one of which, and I'll just share this little tidbit, one of which was when he was, I think, around four years old and he walked in and he said, Dad, I want you to help me with my numbers. He was counting and so forth. And I said, okay, what do you want to do? He said, I want to count to ten. I want to add to ten. I said, okay. And I said, what's two plus three? And he spread his hands out in front of him, sprayed his fingers, looked at both of his hands and said, two plus three is five. I said, what's five plus two? And he looked at his hands again and said seven. He said, what's seven plus two? And he looked at his hands and said, nine. Then I said, what's ten plus two? He looked at his hands once and twice and then looked at me and said, well, I don't know that. I'd have to have twelve fingers to tell you that. Sometimes we don't know what we know. Sometimes we're inhibited or restricted by what we think our limits are. And when we think back on our lives to positive memories, the positive memories, I think, define at least a moment in time when we say that thing has no limits. I can imagine for that thing, I can remember on the one hand and imagine on the other, one of my favorite Einstein quotes is imagination is more important than knowledge because imagination has no limits. I link positive memories of the past to imagination for the future. And when Chris was born all those years ago, we could not have imagined the challenges or the joys or the quality things that have happened to and in our lives because he showed up as part of our household. So happy birthday to you, Chris. And to you, Ruth, also a happy birthday, we never thought we'd be this old. We say that we look at each other all the times and we never thought we'd be this old. And yet the grace of God every day makes whatever point we find in our lives right now. Not only have possibilities, but to have the joy of looking forward and imagining what might be. So these birthdays, these points of memory are times when we can pause and reflect and from my perspective, look at the goodness and the mercy of God. When I read Psalm 23 and come to that closing line where it says, surely the cousins, if you will, surely goodness and mercy shall follow you all the days of your life. When you walk with the Lord, I'm counting on that. I've experienced that and I'll leave that thought with you in this September week. When I come back next time, I'm going to have a couple of other times this week when I chat with you about what it means to commemorate something that is not as good as a birthday by a long shot. And we'll be back soon. God bless. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you later. Bye-bye.