Remember to Remember
Remember the windows down and flying down the interstate coastline; hair flying, music on 11, shout-singing your youth to the open road. Remember the freedom and the joy. Remember life, its motion and wonder and how your heart jumped chasing the horizon.
Remember to remember when the morning brings bad news; how grace fills time, every time.
Remember to mark the day when you remembered all the rivers you’ve crossed, the crosses you’ve bore, the mountains you’ve overcome. Remember to build a mound of stones, next to the trail you call life. And remember to write something on your heart, so you never forget, so you always remember.
Remember to celebrate and to do so with vigor. Jump, run, leap into tomorrow.
Remember to grab the hand of your loved ones, your lover, and your loves. Remember to take them along, to lift them up, to make them a part of it all.
But remember your brother your sister who woke up to the bad news. Remember them in your joy; to tell them how you overcame, about your mound of stones, and how you crossed that river you never thought you could. Remember to include them in the joy, and to sit with them, and pray with them, be quiet with them, and sing with; together, with them, in joy.
Remember to keep quiet your pride and the moments you want to shout to everyone. For silence draws us closer, not farther, to one another and to God, to wisdom and to grace. The quiet gives us room to grow, to let our roots stretch deep. Quiet keeps us—it is the great keeper of our souls.
Remember to work in the quiet, when no one is looking or posting or shouting. Remember that beauty doesn’t blare, it cascades from the quiet places, the wild places, the places that take years to find.
Remember to eat breakfast under a tree.
Remember to eat lunch with a friend.
Remember to leave your phone behind.
Remember how great it feels to ride your bike.
Remember the feeling of pencil rolling across paper.
Remember the silly wonder of fireflies.
Remember how time slows in a hammock.
Remember to hug your friends.
Remember to talk to you children, to tell them stories, to tell them about your mound of stones, and the river you crossed that you never thought you could.
Remember to talk to those with all the years behind them and eternity ever before them. Remember to laugh with them, to hold their hands. Remember to listen to them and learn.
Remember they know more than you and can give you so much wisdom, if only you can take the time, and listen. Remember to respect them, to love them, to care for them, to slow down for them, to help them with doors.
Remember what they’ve already given for you, and what they would in a moment give, just to have you sit with them and laugh, and cry and live with them.
Remember the warriors all around us; women and men from every nation on earth. Remember they took an oath to serve you, to give to you without knowing you, to die for you, for freedom's sake.
Remember to celebrate them and honor them. Remember to ask them about the river they crossed, the one they never thought they could. Remember to ask about the mound of stones they built to remember, to remember.
Remember heaven, my friends; our true home, our true north. Remember how God once breathed into you, and me, and created a place for us to be together; to talk in the park beneath the trees. Remember that heaven walks among us, and reaches out through the beauty pouring forth in abundance from this breathtaking land.
Remember to remember, dear friends, that God delights in the praise of his people. Remember to lift your voice and to give thanks for your job, your family, your hot dog, your car. Remember that every good and perfect gift comes from above, and remember how thankfulness breathes life into each moment of everyday.
Remember to remember.
