I Did Not Think About It For Thirty Years

She was twenty three, and it was quiet, and it was real, and she is sure of that much.

Then she got married, and there were four children, and her mother came to live with them for the last six years, and there was a farm to keep and a hip that went and a good deal of weather. And somewhere in all of that she simply stopped thinking about it.

Not deliberately. She did not put it down or renounce it or grow out of it. She just did not have occasion to bring it to mind, and one decade turned into three the way decades do.

She is fifty six now, and it came back to her about a month ago, in the middle of the afternoon, for no reason at all. And the thought that arrived directly behind it is the one she has not been able to shake since: if it had been anything much, would she really have gone thirty years without once thinking of it?

That is the ache. Not doubt about the day. Doubt about a thing so small that a woman could mislay it for the whole middle of her life.

If you laid something down without noticing, come and sit on the boards. Nobody who has kept theirs in front of them is going to be criticized here.

Forgetting measures a life, not a gift

Let us look plainly at the argument she has been running, because it is a tidy one and it is wrong in a specific place.

The argument says: important things stay in mind, this did not stay in mind, therefore it was not important. Put like that it sounds solid.

But look at what those thirty years were actually full of. Four children, an aging mother, a farm, a hip. Those years did not have room for reflection of any kind, and a great many important things went unthought about in them, including her own health.

Forgetting is a report on how full a life was. It has never once been a report on what was in the person doing the forgetting.

You did not lose it in those thirty years. Nothing you failed to think about has ever been removed from what God put in you. I am not saying that to comfort a woman on a porch. The written word says stir up the gift of God, which is in thee (2 Timothy 1:6), where the gift is stated as present in a man who plainly needed reminding, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a thing in a person while their attention is somewhere else entirely.

The verse assumes you stopped thinking about it

Here is the part that turned this around for me, and it is not a criticism of anybody who has kept theirs close.

Read what Paul takes for granted about Timothy, because he says it without a hint of accusation.

Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands.2 Timothy 1:6

Put thee in remembrance. That is written to a man who had forgotten, or near enough, and Paul does not scold him for it and does not suggest that the forgetting had done any damage to the gift.

And then, in the same sentence, which is in thee. Present tense. Still there. Unstirred, unremembered, and entirely intact.

You are being reminded rather than repaired, and Scripture keeps that gift in the present tense across the whole gap. That is written into the sentence itself, and it is the Holy Spirit who has kept it in a woman for thirty years of children and weather.

Nothing here is against anybody who kept theirs

Something has to be said very plainly, or this turns into a quiet excuse dressed as a comfort.

There are people who have kept the thing in front of them for forty years, who have prayed about it weekly and never let it slip. That is not showing off and it is not anxiety. It is faithfulness, it is good, and there is nothing on this page suggesting otherwise.

The relief is not that keeping it in mind never mattered.

You have something of your own that is still there to count, and counting it takes nothing off one person who never once forgot. Scripture says there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord (1 Corinthians 12:5), where two very different courses run from one hand and neither is downgraded, and it is the Holy Spirit, and not thirty years of attention, who keeps what He gave.

And if this last month has cost more than the people on that porch know, if sleep has gone, if the thought has started to frighten you, please talk to somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, a crisis line, and the emergency services if there is danger to anybody tonight. That is not going around God. It is one of the ways He keeps people.