Welcome to the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival.
This week’s theme is the word ‘Remember’. We’d love for you to join in, all you need to do is to write a blog post about the word ‘Remember’ and link to it using the Mister Linky widget below.
Please feel free to visit all the blogs listed below and read what the other wonderful bloggers have written – to see my offering, just keep scrolling down.
Remember
This coming Thursday is November 5th.
That’s probably fairly meaningless to most people who read this blog but to me, it’s one of the most important days of the year.
Over here in America, probably the most celebrated day (apart from Christmas, New Year and Easter) is the Fourth of July.
In England, the most celebrated day is the fifth of November – and it’s the one thing I really miss about being in England.
Back in 1605 a group of revolutionaries decided that the best way to change the political structure and climate of the country was to kill all of the politicians. Their plan was actually a pretty good one. They planted enough gunpowder to blow up half of the moon beneath the Parliament building and intended to wait until all of the politicians were inside and then light the fuse.
Had they gotten away with it, the political landscape of Britain would have instantly changed. New candidates would have had to be found for every seat and a national election would have been necessary to fill every political position in the country. The changes would have been immense.
However, parliamentary guards uncovered the plot before it came to its explosive fulfillment and managed to arrest some of the perpetrators in the act, including their leader, Guy Fawkes.
November 5th has since become known as ‘Guy Fawkes night’ or ‘bonfire night’ and, all over the country, people hold huge bonfires and let off massive amounts of fireworks. In a very sick twist, many people also make a mannequin out of old clothes stuffed with hay which is called the ‘Guy’. The ‘Guy’ is then burned on top of the bonfire in memory of Guy Fawkes.
I was thinking about this and it seems very strange to me that we even celebrate the Fifth of November. Why remember the day when a mass assassination attempt failed?
In America the big celebration is one of independence and new beginnings. In England we reenact burning someone at the stake.
It’s pretty ghastly really.
All of this led me to the realization that I do the same in my own life. I tend to remember vividly and constantly the negative things that happen to me and yet I struggle to remember any of the good and positive things that happen.
For example, I spent a year or two when I was younger in a terribly abusive relationship where I was manipulated and hurt by my girlfriend again and again. I got myself free of that relationship and moved on. Now though, after twelve years of marriage to the kindest, most consistent and amazing woman I can possibly imagine, I still live in fear that my wife is going to turn out to be like that abusive girl I once dated. Despite 4380+ days of constantly proving herself to not be like that, I still remember the pain I went through over 15 years ago more than the happiness I experience every day now.
Why is it that I find it so much easier to remember the few negative experiences than the vast number of positive ones? Why is it that I tar my wife with the negative brush of that past relationship rather than accepting that my wife is different, that she is what she claims to be, what she has demonstrated herself to be?
You may not have quite the same struggle that I have, but my guess is that you, like me, struggle with trusting God because of what you’ve experienced from humans.
Just as I ascribe certain things to my wife because of how other people have acted toward me, so I ascribe negative things to God based on experiences I’ve had with flawed, fallen human beings.
For our own mental, emotional and physical health we need to work on banishing the negative, human memories from our minds and instead remember the consistency, faithfulness and love that we experience every day from our father, the King of kings and Lord of lords!
My heart has sorrow for you and for your wife, Peter. I know how it hurts to be in both your places.
Each of us has something too painful to forget. We are asked to remember the forgiveness we've received—for a debt too great to be repaid with either gold or good works—and likewise forgive. In the forgiving comes not forgetting, but the ability to not remember.
Thanks, Anne.
Remember, Remember the 5th of November. V for Vendetta was a weird but interesting movie. That is what I always think of when I remember the 5th of November.
I think learning to have joy in struggle and forgiveness go hand in hand. I've found that our desire for justice sometimes makes it hard to let things go and says a lot about our ability to trust God, but trust isn't this weeks topic and neither is forgiveness so I guess I'll just say remember good whenever bad starts to creep in? Yeah I guess I'll give that a try.
I was going to include the poem but although most people in England know the first line or so most of us don't know any of the rest, so I didn't want to mislead anyone.
V for Vendetta awakened the world to the fact that Britain has something it celebrates! 🙂
You know, I was reading about the day and it seems that the holiday is actually a celebration that the King survived the plot not so much the death of Guy Fawkes, which took place on January 31st not November 5th. Something to think about.
Nice. They don't mention THAT at school though.. and why do we burn the Guy?
It's all a little macabre all the same!
Why do we do that? Why do cling to one negative experience to a point where it blots out so many positive ones? It's frustrating. Believe the good, Peter. Thank you for sharing this.
I'm trying to believe the good… It's just so much easier to believe the bad, for some reason!
Thanks for sharing this and for hosting the carnival. I've really enjoyed visiting the blogs here.
It is hard to let go of the negative and enjoy the positive. I hope eventually that negative experience just reminds you that you "escaped a bullet" and makes your happy life now even happier because of that knowledge.
"Escaped a bullet"… you have no idea how true that is!
I've never thought of it like that though. Thanks, Helen.
Forgiving a person who causes us pain is a struggle. I've come to understand it's also necessary to grow as a human being. I read that the words we all should say at time of death are: "Do you forgive me? I forgive you. Thank you. I love you." I'm still learning to apply them while I'm living, too.
An aside: I was in England during a Guy Fawkes "celebration". It was late. We had been driving a good bit of the day and were looking for a place to stay. The person I was with left me in the rental car and went off on foot in search of a room. Well, imagine having costumed people come up to you, alone, in a car, in a town where a coal strike also was in progress, sirens were never-ending, people were engaging in all variety of shenanigans. I thought I was in the middle of a riot. We did find a place to stay that night. It turned out to be a home for coal-miners away from home.
That whole Guy Fawkes experience must have been pretty scary!
It would be bad enough if it was your own country and you knew what was going on!
Thank you Maureen for inspiring me to post my blog today here.
Memory is tricking. I once encountered a girl who stole my boyfriend when I was fifteen (or so I believed). I had her number (in oh so many ways) and when the boy called me just before my fortieth birthday, I picked up the phone and called the girl — did you hear from M? I asked. Haha. She hadn't. I got even (I am so petty). Several years later, at a reunion, I saw that girl. I apologized for my pettiness. I carried my anger and grief over your taking M. away from me, I said. BUt I never dated M. she replied. Yes you did, I insisted. M. walked over. I didn't date Sue P., he said. I dated Sue C. Sue C. happened to be sitting beside us. I never stole M from you, she exclaimed. You had already broken up.
Part 2 of my comment:
Ah, the vagaries of memory. How I carried that wound of my victimhood and wrongful identity. How I nurtured it in memory. How I abused myself with the sadness of feeling betrayed — and all the while, I had the wrong person and the wrong circumstances.
Memory can be tricky. Righting memory is more challenging than writing a wrong. I want to hold onto memory and make it my truth.
In declaring memory faulty, I question everything I remember — and that's scary!
And yet, it is in letting memory go that I free myself to step without question of my right to be where ever I'm at today.
I'm not trying to sound mean here, but your mix-up story is quite hilarious!
It's amazing what wrong perceptions can do!
Those memories are tough to ignore- don’t know if we ever really do, but we can find God in the midst of those hurts and pains. We learn to trust in spite of that pain- we just have to remember the which reality is higher. Thanks Peter.
Look at you getting all pastoral!
Thanks, Jason!
Why is it that we have these doubts? I also was in an abusive relationship, and my poor husband has to deal with some of those old insecurities of mine, though he's never done anything to cause me not to trust him or his motives.
Funny that this time we wrote on 'remember', but 'trust' is what I'm thinking about!
Thanks for this post, and for hosting the carnival, Peter.
You're welcome… and I'm glad I'm not the only one carrying junk from past relationships around!
Your post today made me to go places I really didn't want to go. I needed it though. Thanks.
I'm glad you went there, I appreciated reading your blog… I'm sorry for the pain though.
Thanks for hosting this week Peter. When I get done being sick I'll catch up on the posts!
I know that feeling, I've been there the last couple of days
I've read this more than once today … thank you.
Wow, I hope it has helped in some way!
Thanks for doing this, Peter! So encouraged by some of the participating authors today!
Glad you came by and got involved! There's some amazing posts out there!
Thanks for putting together a calendar for the blog carnival. Very helpful. 😉
For this post, I was moved by your journey to love. I have no doubt you are no longer prisoner of the past. Your wife was God's key that turned and opened the doors out of your past. Each day we live in today moves us away from yesterday. Thnx for sharing.
Wow! This was my first time to participate in the blog carnival and I really enjoyed it! Thank you, Peter, for doing this. I love seeing the way others express their hearts; it's so inspiring.
I'm glad you joined in! We're going to try to do it every two weeks!
Thank you PETER for allowing me to participate in this blog it was quite an experience,cannot believe the gfts that all of you share with each other and with the world contributing talents,faith and love and most important giving of yourselves to one another.. Your faith in the ruler of the universe has truly inspired me. I feel very tiny in your talented world. But I am thankful to be allowed to share. God bless you.
Bernadette, I'm so very glad you joined in with the carnival hope you come back on the 17th and write on the word 'Community' with us.
You fit in completely with the rest of us! We're all one big family.
Hi, Peter
Great article. I come from an abusive background, and I too find it easier to remember the bad than the good. Having said that, my article is actually about one of my few good memories. 🙂
Michelle
PS–My Mother in law is from Australia, and I guess they used to celebrate Guy Fawkes day there too.
We just returned from a trip, as my post will reveal, so I have not had time to read a single post from the "REMEMBER" carnival. I look forward to doing so though.
SIncere thanks & blessings!
This being Remembrance Day here in Canada I find the timing to be very suitable for us to remember the sacrifice what our men and women in uniform have made so that we can be free and live in a free country.
True words, some truthful words man. You made my day!