For someone whose love language is “walk and talk with me” and who’s trademark move is the “Abiwalk,” the last 10 weeks have tested my mettle.
Achilles tendon injuries are notoriously slow to heal. Full recovery usually takes 9-12 months.
But after eight weeks of crutches and casts, scooter and boot, I finally got to walk in shoes—albeit slowly and with a limp—days before my son’s high school graduation. I started physical therapy that week and relished every stretch and pull and flex.
Walking Again
With gratitude, I moved the crutches from my trunk to their storage space in the basement last week.
With delight, I tucked my boot in the back of the closet, folded the knee scooter into my trunk and returned it to my friend.
Even a slow walk to the mailbox filled me with glee. I’d only talked to my new neighbor once before, but Angie made a point to stop, roll down her window and high five me last Friday.
“It is so good to see you walking again,” she said.
Saturday was a glory-splattered graduation party for our son. I even wore sandals. Through the golden hour, I basked in the love of family and friends, with a couple of ice breaks sprinkled in.
That Single Step
Then came Sunday and that single step. Just one step down at church and my Achilles snapped.
Again.
When I think of 10 weeks of recovery undone with one step, it makes me sick. Since Sunday, my boot is back on and my crutches are up. I’m kneeling on another scooter. My PT sessions were cancelled and an MRI scheduled.
And as the only wise God would have it, my reading this week included Psalm 42.
“Why so downcast, O my soul? Put your hope in God,” was a timely reminder. I’ve written before about how we have to defy ourselves and talk back to ourselves and take back the day.
Reclaiming the day, talking back to myself like the psalmist did, has needed to start before I hop from bed to scooter in the morning.
The 19th-century champion of orphans George Müller wrote, “The first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord.” It’s been effortful this week to even thank God for five things, which means it’s that much more needful.
But back to Psalm 42.
What struck me this time through was the word “remember.”
Remember
Here it is in 42:4,
“These things I REMEMBER,
as I pour out my soul:
how I would go with the throng
and lead them in procession to the house of God
with glad shouts and songs of praise,
a multitude keeping festival…”
The psalmist is remembering the good old days. He is remembering the joyful throng, the togetherness and glad songs. He was nostalgic for the golden hours, for the pleasant party—for ”the multitude keeping festival.”
Remembering, I think, is another one of those morally neutral things, like much of social media. It’s not only what we’re remembering, or viewing on our screens that makes a thing good or bad, but also the way it affects us as we use it.
For example, if I spend 15 minutes catching up my feed and walk away feeling chipper, and grateful I could share some encouragement or help friends celebrate, great. But if I walk away feeling envious, or angry or discontent—not good.
In Psalm 42, the psalmist was doing what I was doing—wallowing in nostalgia, remembering the good old days in a dejected, woe-is-me way.
“Can I say, you’re grieving?”
“Can I say, you’re grieving?”
That is the text that came in from a kind friend after I’d left her a tearful voice message. You bet I am, and I am not ashamed of that. There is an unavoidable grief that comes with loss. I’m feel no shame for that. But nursing the nostalgia was not helpful.
Happy memories brought the psalmist down (see 42:5). Because they were such a contrast to his present reality they compounded his grief. We see this in Psalm 42:6,
“My soul is cast down within me…”
My nostalgia—for a walk down the driveway and the sunny graduation party and even my new PT routine—made my heart ache.
A note in the margin on Psalm 42 caught my attention.
He Will Not Much Remember
“Nostalgia,” Alec Motyer wrote, “only increases pain for a past that is gone.” That was his assessment of the joyful throng remembering of Psalm 42:4. “This remembering is a present turning to the God who is always there—even in the far distant north country.”
Motyer is not wrong. Aunt Merriam defines nostalgia as “a sad pleasure experienced in recalling what no longer exists.” I think it’s to this nostalgia that the Preacher contrasts in Ecclesiastes 5:20, “For he will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart.”
To “not much remember” is the gift of God. I see this grace in my parents, who are in their 70’s and occupied with joy of heart. As far as I can tell they are not looking wistfully to the days their children were young and at home and their bodies more fit and able. Instead they are busy with the day. Busy with the garden and the church, with their friends and grandkids. I would say they are joyfully present in the day, not nostalgic for yesterday.
Too Nostalgic
But I was too nostalgic this week, there was too much sad pleasure. When I remembered walking in tennis shoes last week, it made my eyes wet. Nostalgia for the fun two-footed, graduation party on Saturday made me sad. Recalling summer trips and lake hikes was more bitter than sweet this week.
These things I remembered and my soul was downcast.
But “cast down” is not the end of Psalm 42:6. The downcast man utters four more words,
“”Therefore I REMEMBER you.”
He chooses to focus his mind away from the past pleasures to the present reality of his unchanging, faithful God.
But Then I Remembered God
But in this far distant north country, this crippled foot summer, following a lame foot spring, I remembered God.
What, you ask, did I remember about God?
I remembered that he pursues me with goodness and mercy (Psalm 23:6) and that, like Job, I have no idea what he is doing behind the scenes. I remember that all things work for good to those who love God—I do!—and are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28) —to be conformed to the image of Jesus; and I am—and I remember his promise that, “those who seek the LORD lack no good thing” (Psalm 34:10).
I remember God, and my soul rises within me.
There are two kinds of remembering.
Nostaligia makes a soul downcast, and remembering God cheers it up.
