Only so much room for storage <3

I know we have discussed my capacity to over save memories.

Exhibit A: I currently have 35,978 items in the iPhoto area of this desktop computer.

That doesn’t include the untold numbers safely tucked in a file called “Reimer Transfer” that the nice young man who sold me this computer painstakingly downloaded from our old tower memory.

Then there are the same 35,978 items downloaded to the MacBook Pro….and then saved to an external hard drive…not to mention….

3,408 photos resting on my phone.

Of which all have been downloaded to both of the above mentioned computers and might also possibly be duplicated and living on a cloud out there somewhere.

So when I was finally feeling released to delete a good portion of these treasures off my phone and yet still showing low storage capacity, I realized that after I delete them…they transfer to another file called…

“Recently deleted photos”…where they live for a month just in case I need to retrieve something.

It occurs to me that I only have so much digital, emotional, mental, physical space to accumulate and document and store the experiences and moments  of life…my life and life that goes on around me.

But how do we delete the deleted files?

Now, I realize this example falls short because I am talking about photos that I have saved verses memories that stir up old wounds but hang with me here….

How do we effectively erase the images that lurk in places and, while we are typically unaware of them in the course of our daily living, crop up and suck the life out of us at the oddest times?

They were deleted because they no longer served a beneficial purpose and yet…there they are. Taking up space in the memory, casting a shadow on our moving forward today.

As I ponder this for myself, I realize I have several options.

I can gaze intently at the image of a deleted memory and allow myself to be refreshed anew in guilt, grief, sorrow, loss, regret….whatever emotions accompanied the event.

I can take the image to close friends and I can ask them to join me as I look on. I can describe vividly to them the details of the pain or shame or the injustice and spend my energy enlisting their help in giving new life to this event…help me retrieve it back into the active memory files…and hopefully get them on board to hold in their own data banks.

Or

I can hold it up to the only One who can truly erase the past. The One who permanently deletes…by casting it into an ocean deep with mercy.

I can take Him at His Word when He says though my sins be red as the deepest reds, He will make them like the new fallen snow.

That when He forgives, He remembers no more.

That He binds up the broken hearted and heals the shattered heart.

That He is the same yesterday, today and forever and He alone is the only One who can safely bury the past.

Until a thing is buried in Him, it has the capacity to linger and haunt the present and cast shadows on the future.

Is it easy, this turning over of long-held thoughts and memories to Him?

No.

But what walk of faith is ever easy?

May the Lord Himself strengthen us to open up wide the hidden places in our hearts and minds where old wounds, sins and sorrows have tucked themselves into our souls…that He might be invited in to clean house in the deepest places within us.