I will Never Forget You

I Will Never Forget You

Memory is a funny thing.  What makes us remember one thing, but forget another?

I remember my first real kiss.  It was April of 1983 and I was sitting on the front step of the house of a girl named Nancy.  We had become good friends and I was sharing a ride from Covenant College, on Lookout Mountain, near Chattanooga to my parents’ home in Northern Michigan.  Her home was 2/3rds of the way to mine.

So, there we were, sitting on the steps of her home.  The sky was a Northern Indiana auburn hue.  The martins were flying and swooping in an intricate ballet and Nancy was sitting beside me.  I can still remember the warmth of her on my right side.

I wanted to tell her how I felt about her, but I was afraid it would freak her out, so I sat there, nervous.

I felt her weight shift and I turned to look at her, then she tilted her head and kissed me.  She backed off just far enough to say “I love you.” And I was speechless.

If ever there was I time I didn’t want to be quiet, this was it.  I managed, through a tight throat, to say “I love you too.”

This was the first time I was in love, and the first time a kiss really meant something, but the relationship was not to be.  Nancy didn’t come back to Covenant.  We tried to keep it together, but her life was growing one way, and mine another.  The love was real, but love has to be maintained, and that was not possible… our time was over.

I still visited whenever I was traveling to Michigan, but there was not enough to keep the friendship alive.  There came a point when I was driving up Interstate 65 and I knew I should just keep on driving and not stop to visit her, so, watching the exit, I drove past Nancy’s life forever. 

I stopped at the next exit to mourn the final collapse of a relationship.  I had another reason to stop: for the first time, just there at exit 253 on Interstate 65, I was aware of the enormity of humanity.  I traveled 440 miles along that highway four times a year.  There were so many exits along those miles, and at the moment I passed Nancy’s off-ramp I came to realize that there were thousands of dramas, just like mine, at each exit.  That is a lot of joy and sorrow.

It became a ritual, each time I drove north on 65, to mark Nancy’s exit.  Every time, there was sadness, but the sadness slowly faded… still sad, but no longer painful.

I graduated from college, took a position in the military, got engaged, spent more than a year overseas in Asia, came back and married the second woman I fell in love with.  We lived in Colorado, and then moved to the Auburn area in Alabama.  From Auburn I would pack up the family occasionally and travel north to visit my parents.

On each of our trips, I took Interstate 65 North.  On one of those trips I remember how the sun was setting and the sky turned deep red.  I looked out over a field and saw the martins swooping and dancing in the evening air.  Suddenly I realized that I was not on I 65, but was in Michigan and I had not noticed Nancy’s exit go by.  I tried to remember how her exit looked, or even the number, or the last time I had done the ritual of marking her exit, and I couldn’t recall it.  I tried to remember her favorite song, her favorite ice cream flavor, her address… nothing.

I still remember that evening, and that kiss and those 3 words “I love you”, I remember her eyes, they were happy and kind, but everything else was gone.

I looked over to my wife.  Trina was looking out her window at the same field that triggered my memory, oblivious to its significance to me.  I looked back at my 2 daughters who were reading and my son who was trying to lick boogers off his nose with his tongue and I realized what I already knew: I didn’t belong with Nancy… I belonged here.  I didn’t remember Nancy because I was with Trina. 

This was as it should be.

All this came rushing through my memory when I read this passage:

Isaiah 49 

¹⁵ “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast 
   and have no compassion on the child she has borne? 
Though she may forget, 
   I will not forget you! 
¹⁶ See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; 
   your walls are ever before me. 

The first part of this passage is easy to understand… do moms forget their own kids?  Would a mother neglect their child?  Even if this happens, and sadly it does, God will never forget.

Even though I have allowed Nancy to fade from memory, God says that He will never allow me to fade from His memory or neglect me.  He tells us why He will not forget:

            “See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;”

What it means to have a name engraved in your hand is not as clear to us as it was to the people who lived with Isaiah.  My first impression was of a person who writes things on the palm of their hand with a pen… this is not like using a pen.  It literally means that God has carved our name through His skin and into subcutaneous tissue… ewww.

The Hebrew is “chaqaq” חָקַק which means “to cut, to cut into, to hack”  This is a permanent mark… it is not temporary at all.

There were Hebrews who were so fanatical about a cause or a city that they used to carve the symbol or the name of the city or cause into their palms.  This was serious business because there was a real threat of infection and the act of carving scars into the skin was against the Law of the Torah:

Leviticus 19:28

New American Standard Bible (NASB)

²⁸ You shall not make any cuts in your body for the dead nor make any tattoo marks on yourselves: I am the LORD.

So, here you have a Jewish man, or woman, who is so fanatical, they will carve a symbol into the skin of their hands and defy the law of God to show their loyalty.  That’s extreme commitment. 

This is what Isaiah is saying about God; He says that He has chosen to break the law to keep us with Him.  What does this mean?

2 Corinthians 5:21

New American Standard Bible (NASB)

²¹ He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

It means that the act of accepting our sin meant taking the place of the lawbreaker, taking on the guilt of sinners and being nailed to a cross.  In taking our place the hands of our God were marked permanently.   The name that God engraved into the palms of His hands is the nail mark in the palm of the hand of a crucified savior.  It means that when Jesus looks at His hands, He sees the price He was willing to pay for us.  How much do you think you worth?  Watch The Passion of Jesus to see what you are worth to Him.  Jesus is fanatical about you.

How does this tie to remembering a kiss and a girl?

We remember the people we are with and we forget the people we leave.  I know that we keep a part of a person we have left, but there is not that relationship filled with vitality anymore.

Since I am out of Nancy’s life, I don’t know what makes her laugh, or cry, or smile.  Since I am a nosey person, I know what city she lives in, generally what she is doing, and that she has been married to one man for at least 25 years.  It comforts me to know she is living well, but I don’t know anything about her fears, or hopes, or dreams.

Jesus knows where I am, what I am doing and what my dreams are.  He knows my fears and my strengths.  He knows what I need, and what I want.  Why does He know me so well?  Jesus knows me because He is with me. 

He said ‘Do this in remembrance of Me.’ then He took the bread and the cup and instituted communion.  Of all the commands Jesus left us, only once did He say ‘remember Me’.  Isn’t it odd that the one time He calls us to remember is with a ceremony tied intimately with His death? 

Or is it?

Would I die for Nancy?  Sadly, no.  Would I die for Trina?  Yes, I would, because she is with me and I have invested my whole self in her life.  The truth is, the more we invest in something, the less willing we are to abandon it and the more we are willing to pay to keep it.  Jesus invested in us to His death.  Death is a pretty big investment.

Jesus invested so deeply in you and I that He will never back out.  I think this is why He picked communion to help us remember Him, it’s because He wants us to have confidence that we will never be forgotten; that He is invested in us and will never back out; and that He is with us.

This is as it should be.