Reading old prayer lists and remembering

I rummaged through a stack of stuff in the china cabinet I use for a bookcase this afternoon, and pulled out an old composition book. Curious, I started reading. The first pages were Bible study notes for a class I was teaching back in 1986. As I flipped through the pages, I came to notes on the first meeting of the Board for Tim's Transplant Fund in October, 1988. I had taken pretty good notes on the discussion, which covered a lot of financial and legal questions.

Then I came to prayer meeting notes. Back in the days after Tim's transplant surgery, we had a Friday night prayer group at the house on Hobart Drive. Most of the people went to the same church we did, but not everyone. Every week we prayed for each other, the church, friends and family, and the moral / political / legislative issues in the country.

I stood at the kitchen counter, determined to read through those notes, despite the fact that it was hurting me to do it.

I had forgotten so many things, so many of the people and situations. The names mentioned - some of them are dead now, like Tim. Others divorced from each other, moved away from Florence or even out of state. As I read, I hurt. Anger, sadness, disappointment, frustration, regret, loss, all washed over me. Occasionally there was gladness and joy but all too rarely.

The last prayer group notes stopped the end of 1989 when the group stopped meeting at our home but I had continued writing my own prayer requests in that book for some time. The last item is dated 1997 but it's just one page and just a few lines on that page.

I have other prayer and Bible study notebooks stored in the bottom of that china cabinet, but I don't want to pull them out to read right now. Maybe later. I still do some prayer lists and some Bible study, but not much writing in a composition book. Most of my writing these days is on computer. I don't usually even print those pages out.

But those composition books contain a treasure, a tangible record of the years of our lives, Tim and mine. Reading those notes takes me back and I remember, and then I begin once again to miss him so very much.

And once again I hear the Lord gently, patiently, repeatedly remind me that Tim's life is so wonderful and fascinating and full, that it would be a dreadful thing for me to pull him back here with me. I just ask him to patiently forgive me again.

I know it's selfish of me to miss Tim that way, and I get over it pretty quickly once my attention is refocused off the past and onto the present - the heavenly present, especially. "Look forward, not back," the Lord reminds me. Maybe I should write that in big letters on index cards and tape them up around the house.