Memory Upgrade: Foreheads, Hands and Doorposts

Please tell me I’m not alone. It happens to me at least daily:

I might be standing in the kitchen when I realize I need to close the window in my child’s room before the morning air wafting through the house gets too hot. Making my way around the corner, I climb the stairs. I reach the top and when I find myself at the end of the hallway, I cannot – for the life of me – remember why I’m there. The sheer number of purposeless trips I make upstairs each day could almost justify eating an entire bag of Peanut Butter M&M’s. Almost.

While I can joke about this propensity to forget things, it does frustrate me. A diligent, applied effort is required for me to retain information. I wish my own memory was as easily upgraded as that of my computer’s. (I am exceedingly thankful that my husband won’t upgrade me for sharing the plight of my electronics).

One of the most exasperating ways this affects me is in the memorization of scripture. I don’t advocate memorizing it to check it off a list or to wear as a Christian merit badge, but for the value imparted when our hearts are full of, and changed by, the Word. Deuteronomy 6 offers some consolation for my faulty recall, and simultaneously calls me to a high standard:

And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up.  Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
— Deuteronomy 6:6-9 NLT

Clearly, the Lord knew the Israelites would be prone to forget even that which He esteemed most highly: keeping the commands He’d given them.

I’d love to say that ‘important’ stuff is permanently emblazoned on my memory, but I’m astonished at what I can forget. (I’m so glad birth certificates note the time of my children’s entrances to this world.)

The verse offers clues to remembering God’s instructions to us:

• Repeat the scriptures. Again and again. If it merits remembrance, it merits repetition. Say it out loud, sing it, chant it, write it, act it out and move to it.
• Tell others what you’ve recently read or studied. Tell your children. Let them see how you value it by sharing it. We often learn more through teaching than we do from reading.
• Take it with you throughout the day. Don’t compartmentalize life into neat packages that don’t integrate into all parts of life. Scripture is meant to permeate our whole being, not be relegated to minutes set aside for it at a specific time of day. Find a way to apply it. Right away.
• Use physical reminders. On our bodies and on the structures in which we abide (or drive!). It might not be a red string tied around a finger, but something that cues us to what we’re learning. These also can serve as conversational springboards for telling others when they can visibly see our reminders.
• Commit to it. Wholeheartedly. We won’t be successful with a haphazard effort. But it’s worth it.