11.13 // Remembering

This afternoon, the kids and I whipped up a German chocolate cake and decorated it with sprinkles.
After dinner, we lit some candles and sang to Grandpa Marselle and listened to Van Morrison and told stories.
He would have been sixty years old today.

As we cut up cake and scooped ice cream, Jackson told us about his favorite memories of his dad. And he shared stories he grew up hearing from family and friends, too:

Like how Marselle would give haircuts in the dorms as a college student. And since it was against the rules to charge money for these haircuts, he cheated the system by requiring every client to buy a pencil from him— a loophole to still be paid for his service.
And I recall how Jackson also gave haircuts in college— mostly mullets—and called this nonprofit venture “Premium Cuts.” Sitting back, I laugh at the memory. Olivia adds that next year, we should put a fondant “hair buzzer” on top of the German chocolate cake as decoration, to commemorate this part of Marselle’s history. And we all laugh because of the irony — that Marselle himself was bald and probably didn’t need his hair trimmed quite as often!

Later, Jackson told us about how his father and his Uncle Mark snuck out of a pastor’s conference to see James Taylor in concert.
And can imagine Marselle’s boy and Mark’s boy, both pastors now in the same conference, leaving their own required conference to see their own musical hero— probably John Mayer.

And then he shared how Marselle’s favorite football team was the Buffalo Bills. And how he would take each son out for breakfast at the hardware store diner for their birthdays. And how he was competitive at almost everything— even playing tennis with men from church. Story after story, glimpse after glimpse.
And I see Benson’s eyes light up, hearing the details of the man who is also named Marselle— how he loved football (just like him), and going out to breakfast (just like him), and tackling and wrestling and playing anything and everything (just like him).

After the kids go to sleep, I find myself with a few small memories, too.
I remember driving with Grandfather Moore to lay sod over Marselle’s grave in Spring Arbor; how we drove way too fast down those university roads in his red Buick, and how the five gallon bucket full of tools rolled around in the trunk; how we sat there and paused from time to time, and Grandfather’s eyes would well up, still smiling.

I recall going for a run the morning before our wedding and stopping by that same spot. I stood next to the sod and wondered what Marselle would be like at an occasion like this one. And I wondered what he would think of me. And I wondered if Jackson would even be the same person if Marselle had not passed all those years ago. And even though I had never met him, I wished he was there to celebrate with us.

And, most recently, I remember baptizing Benson into the church with our family and our closest friends, gifting him with Marselle’s name and an official entrance into the holy body Marselle loved.

I have seen what it is like for Jackson to live in the light of a true legacy— to be Marselle’s son. We don’t have to go very far at all before we meet someone who knew Marselle or read his writings in Light and Life or remembers the morning he was killed. Usually these stories end with statements like “he was ahead of his time” or “Marselle was a prophet.”
And now Benson will have a similar experience— to be the namesake, the grandson, the heir.

As the parsonage grows dark, I sit back and ponder the thought:
We really do live our memories, don’t we?
Probably more than we live reality.

Our lives are responses and reactions to everything that came before and how we remember it— what value or emotions or affect we attach to the past.
We live out of what we remember.

I first realized the importance of remembering ten years ago when a close family friend passed away suddenly. He, too, was a father.
A few weeks after his funeral, I was on the phone his wife under a big dome in the entrance of the university library, listening to her grief and struggle, her tight grip on faith in spite of it all.
And she told me, “If we stop remembering, we will fall into despair. All of our faith is remembering.”

This is true for all of God’s people, isn’t it?
The Israelites journeyed through cycles of forgetfulness and repentance, captivity and remembrance. We read their story and think to ourselves, If only they would remember the true God? If only they would remember that it was He who brought them through the Red Sea, and He who led them by fire and cloud, and He who fed them with manna and quail, and quenched their aching thirst with water from a rock!

And reality was often shaped by their remembering.
The Israelites chose to remember slavery in Egypt as feasting, and they lived as forgotten, unrescued people.
And yet, when they remembered and told stories and sang songs of their crossing over, their hearts would turn to God once again. In these times, they lived in the blessing of His Light, receiving His invitation to be their God and to be His people.

This is the rhythm of all of God’s people.
And it is my story, too.
I have many seasons where I grieve my own fickle, forgetful heart. If only I would remember how the Lord has led us, provided for us miraculously, brought us through great pain and trials, spoke through friends and prophets and children, loved us into wholeness.
And there are times of great rejoicing, too. When the memories of our baptisms and our sea-crossings and our bread from heaven become real again. And in those times we live free, hope-filled lives.

Even in the grief of losing a father, there are holy memories that bring Light.

Earlier today, I sat with John Taylor on my lap and sipped my fourth cup of coffee while listening to Luke’s passage on the ten lepers. And my soul leaned into the movement of their healing— that “as they went, they were made clean.”
Healing the dead or rotting places in us often takes time, takes pilgrimage, takes a deep faith rooted in memory. Lepers, recalling the stories they had heard of a Jew named Jesus, finally see Him at a distance. And they cry out.
And at His word, they leave their place of isolation, trusting that the stories they have heard are true. Their healing is intimately tied to their movement— to literal steps of faith.

And then, as we know, only one of the ten comes back to Jesus to simply say “thank you.”
Only one remembers.

Tonight will be spend remembering Marselle and loss and being children and loved ones we still miss.
And I know that remembering is a mysterious and yet essential movement into deep faith, and into healing, and into gratitude.
This time spent telling stories and singing songs and sharing old photographs can be a posture of pausing, turning back, and saying “thank you” to the One who keeps us whole in the midst of suffering and pain and death.
Because we know that in the end, like the lepers, every single trace of rotting death will be banished for good, and we will walk in the glory of His great Love.