Give the Gift of Forgetting
By Susan Law
Corpany
In an Institute class on
courtship and marriage, which I took many years ago
with the man I was about to marry, Dee Hadley told the
men, “Women may forgive, but they never forget.” He
was of the opinion that women have total recall when
it comes to slights and suffering, and are especially
gifted at recalling the faults and foibles of their
husbands.
Forgotten anniversaries,
household appliances given as gifts, botched birthdays,
not to mention the time he wore that hideous tie when
meeting your friends for the first time — things such
as these occupy a large sector of the female brain.
Perhaps it is politically incorrect for me to say so,
but I find this to be all too true, at least in my case.
Perhaps reader response will bear me out. Brothers?
In 1994 I attended the
20-year reunion of the South High Class of ’74. As
I entered the elevator to go up to the dinner, I glanced
at the name tags of the couple sharing my ride up.
Without thinking, I blurted out. “Marty! Kris! You
guys got married! Wow! Marty, remember that day in
health class when they were showing the childbirth film
and you tried to leave class because you couldn’t take
it and fainted in front of the whole class? We knew
you guys were in love when Kris ran up there to make
sure you were okay. I remember how you fell and knocked
over the skeleton and the bones flew all over the room.
It was great!” I turned to Kris. “So do you guys have
any kids? Did he do any better in person?”
Ignoring me, he spoke to
his wife. “I told you someone would remember.
We’re not even off the elevator and someone remembered!”
Recently my husband and
I were in Washington D.C. for a weekend during a time
of torrential rains and flooding. On Sunday morning,
armed with directions to the nearest chapel, we headed
out to go to church. Thom was driving. I was navigating.
Because it was raining so hard, he asked me to say a
prayer to ask for help getting to church. I began with
the standard “car prayer” and while I was at it, I figured
I might as well mention our kids, and of course, our
parents, our siblings facing challenges, the sick and
afflicted, the poor and the needy, and... Only partway
through my personal “prayer roll,” I heard a definitive
“Amen!” from the seat beside me. Then he quickly asked,
“Straight or right? Do I take this exit?” With a quick
glance at the directions in my lap, I confirmed that
the upcoming exit was indeed the one we needed. He
apologized for having found it necessary to interrupt
me, but explained that he needed me on duty as navigator
at that point. We made it to church safely and on time.
(Obviously my prayer worked.)
Fast forward several weeks.
We were heading across our island, and Thom asked me
to give a prayer as we started out. My instant recall
kicked in, and I gave a short prayer, covering only
the basics of the car and driver operating safely.
I probably should have stopped there, but I didn’t.
Right after the “amen” I asked, “Was that short enough
for you?”
“It was fine.”
“Good. I’d hate for you
to have to cut me off.”
“What are you talking about,
Susan?”
“You know, Washington,
D.C., on the way to church.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“I had completely forgotten about that until you brought
it up. Why did you bring it up, anyway?”
“I don’t know. I just
wanted you to know that I can do a short car
prayer.”
“That was not a judgment
of your prayer. It was raining. I couldn’t see well.
I needed to know which exit to take.”
An internet friend of mine,
Geoffrey, once told me he had decided he needed a system
for dealing with problems. He was of the opinion that
twelve steps (and even seven habits) were too much for
the average man, so he came up with his own three-step
program. He calls it “Feel. Deal. Heal.” That describes
my husband pretty well. He truly does let things go,
and for that I am grateful. I really do want to learn
how to return the favor, but I admit to a weakness in
this area. Thom says that the companion program for
women is “Recall. Replay. Retaliate.” Unfortunately,
I think I’ve got that one down.
I am grateful that when
I do something absent-minded, he never brings up old
things I have done. Trust me, there would be an unending
supply. There is the time that I got mixed up about
the dates the German tourists were coming to stay in
our vacation home, and we drove across the island and
frantically helped our cleaning ladies do a one-day
turn-around in anticipation of their arrival, only to
discover they weren’t due for another month.
There was the time I couldn’t
remember the combination to our storage locker and finally
had to borrow the bolt cutters from the office to get
to the things I needed, figuring it would be cheaper
to just go buy a new lock than to waste any more time
trying to remember the combination. When I got the
bolt cut, which was no easy feat, I discovered why the
combination hadn’t worked. Like Geraldo opening Al
Capone’s vault, I got a surprise when the stuff in the
locker wasn’t ours. (Thom can’t really bring this up,
however, because I never told him about it. Just checking
to see if he reads my column.)
I bought Melissa (her name
was all over the boxes) a new lock and ‘fessed up to
the lady in the office, who put the new lock on and
gave the owner the combination, reassuring her that
I hadn’t touched or taken anything. (Well, okay I pushed
the button on her dancing hamster to see what song it
would play, but nothing else.) I left her a signed
copy of one of my books as an apology. Then I opened
the locker next to it and got out what I needed. (The
good news is that I did remember the combination
correctly after all.)
I could go on, as could
my husband, anytime I do something new, but he doesn’t.
He does a “Feel. Deal. Heal,” and lets it go. I imagine
that if he brought up these things on a regular basis,
I would find it increasingly difficult to have loving
feelings towards him, and would certainly find myself
wondering how he was able to simultaneously love me
and keep my “fault storage” completely up-to-date, rotating
the stories regularly and replenishing the supply with
each new incident.
When my son was in elementary
school, he had a bad day and wanted to switch schools.
He was sure nobody would ever forget that he had gotten
a nosebleed and bled all over his report. So I told
him a little story about his dad. “He was playing on
the softball team for the law office where I worked.
They had recruited him because he was a good player,
even though he didn’t work there. I asked the attorney
in charge if he was allowed to play. She said it didn’t
matter whether or not we were married. It mattered
if he could play ball. The batter hit a ball straight
at him in center field, and if he had caught it, we
would have won the game. But it rolled between his
legs, and instead of being the hero, he lost the game
with that one fumble. He felt awful. He didn’t want
to come into the office or see anyone from the team,
sure they would never forget. But in just a few days,
nobody mentioned it again or remembered about it.”
“Yeah mom,” he said. “Well
if no one remembered about it, then how come you’re
telling me about it now?”
I had to admit, the kid
had a point.
Perhaps the wrongdoing
isn’t so much in the remembering as it is in the rehearsing,
whether it is our sins of the past, a laundry list of
our spouse’s shortcomings, or reminding others of things
they’ve done that should be long-past forgotten. While
I am often absent-minded, I have total recall in some
areas, and I often wonder how I can tell if I have truly
forgiven someone.
Sometimes I think we beat
ourselves up for not having forgiven someone because
we still remember the wrongdoing committed against us.
For me, I consider it “forgetting” if I am able to call
forth a certain incident without the attending feelings
of anger or guilt. My hope is that old age, which is
fast-approaching, will likely take care of the rest.
We heard in our General
Conference this past weekend a story from Bishop
Richard C. Edgley, who brought home a couple
of souvenir towels from the place he had stayed during
a summer job and how he made a trip back to return them,
prompted by a comment from his father about his expectations
for his son’s behavior and integrity. In sharing that
story, he obviously had to remember it, but it was not
the remembrance of someone racked with guilt for an
unrepented sin, nor was it an enjoyed recollection revealing
that he had not been totally squeaky clean in his youth.
It was shared as a teaching moment.
I believe it is the “letting
go” part that we need to work most on, and the “forgetting”
will follow. We need to let go of nursing hurts, of
reveling in wrongdoings, of picking off emotional scabs
and preventing healing that can naturally occur if we
will let it.
According to the scriptures,
our sins will be forgotten (D & C 58:42), blotted
out (Psalms 51:1), or bleached (Isaiah 1:18). Forgotten
is one of many ways of saying they will be gone. It
is a great and wonderful gift God offers us, not only
that our sins will be forgiven, if we take the steps
necessary for that to happen, but that they won’t be
rehearsed to us or others.
Whether it is a matter
of little consequence, like many of our small grievances
and annoyances are, or a more serious transgression,
forgiveness is a gift we should also give one another.
If we can think of no better reason for doing it, we
should do it for the sake of our own salvation.
According to Matt 6:15,
we have to give it in order to get it:
