THE COMPANION

Sometimes memory is not something we go back to. It is something that comes forward to meet us.
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I am in a season where memory has not been quiet.
Not passive. But insistent. Like it has come for something I have.

There are the memories perfect in their completion—
A little girl in pigtails chasing monarch butterflies.
The young woman walking with her Daddy down the aisle.

But the memories that come for me now are ‘other.’
They come to seek a completion only I can give.

What if memory isn’t something we revisit, but something that visits us—
Not a haunting.
Or a lesson.
But an opportunity to finish what was started then, in our now?

The college girl who fell in love with a man with a child—she finds me.
And the daughter who cared for both parents through their hardest seasons in the best way she knew how—she does as well.

The woman I am is who I tried to be, so desperately then.
And I see things now I couldn’t see before.

But what if memory’s intention is not to shame or judge but to complete what was left, then, undone?

These memories find me when I’m preoccupied with other things.
They seek me out as if waiting for me to right the story from an evolved perspective—
one that sees more clearly,
can soften what was once hard,
eager to hold, understand, even forgive.

Memory isn’t something we return to but something that returns to us. Not randomly. Or carelessly. But with a mission in mind.

As if something in the story needs attending.
As if its purpose is still very much alive.

There have been many times when the older and wiser version of me has blamed the young woman of my youth for her decisions—“How could she be so foolish, so impetuous, so seemingly unkind?”

Memory allows us to hold what we could not then from a different place in ourselves.

With a different capacity for tenderness.
With a different relationship to pain.

At times, we are [supernaturally] invited to transcend this moment to encounter another one passed, not only as it was…but as we are able to hold it now.

Maybe this is why memory stays with us.
Not as a fixed record.
But as a companion.

A companion that returns
until we are able to be less Judge and more Friend.

Until the love in it
is no longer hidden behind the hurt.

Until what was once unbearable
can be understood…even forgiven.

It is not the event that changes.
It is the one holding the event that does.

And slowly—sometimes over years, sometimes over a lifetime—
the story begins to change shape.

Not because it was rewritten,
But because it has been held long enough
to become something else.

Maybe memory is not asking us to go back.
Maybe it is asking us to linger long enough for something in us to open.

To stay long enough for forgiveness to take its miraculous shape.
Not as an idea. But as a lived reality.

How remarkable—healing and forgiveness are not separate processes but intertwined. Maybe that’s precisely why memory is a constant companion in me now.

The past is not so far away as we imagine.
It is here. Right by our side. Time collapsing.
Nudging us not to refuse to leave things unattended.
But to finish them, with all the love we have gathered, for good.  

NOTES

Some memories feel like a chosen return.
We go back to them.
They soothe.
Anchor.
Remind us of something good.

Others arrive as an unbidden arrival.
They come forward on their own.
Not because we invited them—
but because something in them is still unfinished.

I don’t think these are the same kind of memory.

One functions more like archive—
something held, remembered, revisited.

The other feels more active and alive—
not stored,
but still moving,
still asking,
still becoming.

Not every memory returns like this.
Not the ordinary ones.
Not the ones that pass easily through us.
But the ones that carry weight—
the ones that shaped us,
the ones that marked us—
those are the ones that tend to stay.

What to do with this

Most of us have learned to look quickly—
and then look away.

Do something different.
Do not look away.

When something returns to you—
a moment, a feeling, a fragment—
stay.

Do not rush to explain it.
Do not minimize it.
Do not move past it too quickly.

Stay long enough
to feel what is actually there.

Let yourself see it
as it was.

And then—
let yourself experience it again
as who you are now.

Notice what is different.
Not only in the memory—
but in you.

Where are you softer?
Where are you stronger?
Where are you able to hold something now
that once felt unbearable?

Let that matter.

Do not force forgiveness.
But do not assume it is out of reach.

If something in you begins to soften—
even slightly—
do not interrupt it.

That is the beginning.

Return to it if you need to.
Not to relive it—
but to meet it again
with who you are today.

You are not going back.
You are allowing something to come forward
so it can be held differently.

That is how healing begins.

Musings on Memory
Not all memories are asking to be remembered.
Some are asking to be completed.

The ones that return are not random.
They carry something that is still unfinished.

You may not have been able to meet them fully then.
That does not mean you cannot meet them now.

What changes is not the past.
It is your capacity to be with it.

Memory is not just a record.
It is a place where something can still be made whole.

You do not have to force resolution.
But you can allow a different kind of contact.

Sometimes healing does not come from moving on.
But from staying long enough
for something to shift.

Even a small softening matters.

You are not being pulled backward.
Something is asking to come forward to be made whole.

 As Easter approaches: When Jesus said, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do*,” it was not only spoken into the moment itself, but with a ‘far beyond’ point of view.

Not just in response to what was happening—
but in recognition of what would one day be understood.

As if he could already see the distance we would need to travel.
As if time itself, for a moment, had collapsed.

From that place—he spoke.

And I wonder if memory does something similar in us.
Not perfectly.
Not completely.
But in glimpses.

*Luke 23:34