My Children Never Met That Version Of Me

Your daughter asked you last week whether you had ever been good at anything sporty.

She was not being unkind. It was a completely ordinary question, asked by a nine year old halfway through something else, and she had no idea what she was asking.

And you said something like, a bit, when I was younger.

A bit.

Here is what you did not say, because there was no way to say it in that kitchen at that moment without it turning into something.

There were about eight years, roughly from nineteen to twenty seven, when your body was the best thing about you. You could do things most people cannot do. You went out in weather that other people stayed in for. You were the one who kept going when everybody else had stopped, and you knew it about yourself, and it was quietly the foundation of a lot of your confidence.

And then there were three children, and years of the kind of tiredness that does not come off, and a body that did the enormous work of making three people and was changed by it, and a decade where nobody asked you what you were capable of because everybody was asking you for something else.

Your children have never met that woman. Not once. She was finished by the time the first one could talk.

So they think this is what you are. Tired. Sitting down when possible. A bit, when I was younger.

Teach them thy sons, and thy sons' sons

There is an instruction in Deuteronomy about memory that is usually read as being about God's works, and it is, and look at the mechanism it uses.

Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons' sons. (Deuteronomy 4:9, King James Version)

Take heed to yourself and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life; but teach them to your sons, and your sons' sons.

Two dangers are named in that verse and neither of them is what people expect.

The first is forgetting. The second is that the thing departs from your heart, which is different from forgetting, and closer to what has happened to you: the memory is intact and it has stopped feeling like it belongs to you.

You have a life whose earlier chapters are being kept somewhere the written word never intended, and Deuteronomy 4:9 has never once asked a woman to store her own history in silence. The verse says teach them thy sons, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves a thing from a private memory into a family's account of itself.

You are able to feel how strange the remedy is. The instruction against a thing departing from your heart is not to think about it more. It is to tell it to a child.

That is the mechanism. Telling it is how it is kept.

And it says sons and sons' sons, which means the telling is meant to go further than one generation, which means it was never a private possession in the first place.

You were never handed your own history for safekeeping alone, and Deuteronomy 4:9 has never once made the telling of it a form of boasting. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps a thing alive by putting it in somebody else's hands, and the passage puts the remedy against forgetting in the telling rather than in the remembering.

Tell them, and do not lead with the loss

Here is the difficulty and it is a real one, so let me name it before the assignment.

You have not told them because you do not know how to say it without it sounding like a complaint.

You are able to tell your children something true about their mother, and the difficulty of finding the words has never once meant the thing should not be said. It is written that a woman is to teach them to her sons, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gets the first sentence out of somebody who has practiced it eleven times in her head.

Every version you have rehearsed comes out wrong. I used to be able to. Before you were born I could. You should have seen me at twenty two.

Every one of those has the loss as the main clause and the child hears an accusation, however gently it is said, because the sentence structure puts them at the end of the good part.

So do not tell them. Show them.

That is the whole difference and it is the assignment.

You have a way to hand them this that does not require you to find a sentence, and showing them has never once carried the freight that telling them does. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in a living room where a woman is demonstrating something, and Deuteronomy 4:9 makes the passing on of it the point rather than the accuracy of the account.

Show them one thing, however it comes out

So here is the assignment.

Show one of them one physical thing that this body once did well, right there in the room, however it comes out.

You are able to demonstrate something badly and have it be a gift rather than an exhibit, and how it looks today has never once been the part they will keep. It is written to teach them thy sons, and thy sons' sons, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman standing up in her own front room to show a child how something is held.

If it was a sport, show them the grip. Show them how you stood. Let them try it and correct their hands.

If it was walking or climbing or rowing or carrying, show them the movement, the actual movement, with your arms, in the room.

Ten minutes. And here is the discipline, which is the same one every time on this site: do not apologize while you do it.

The moment you say I used to be better at this, you have handed them the loss instead of the thing. They do not want the loss. They cannot use it. They want the grip.

You have a nine year old who will remember her mother showing her how to hold something, and what your hands can do today has never once been what she was watching. Deuteronomy 4:9 says teach them thy sons, and thy sons' sons, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a demonstration in a living room into a thing a family keeps.

And when she asks whether you were good, this time say yes.