Packing Up Boxes is Easier Than Packing Away Memories

It was the tenth box of clothes. Or was it the eleventh? I wasn’t really keeping track of how many boxes I moved from the storage room in the basement of my home. But I was almost to the bottom of the large stack. And that’s where I thought the infant clothes would be located. Finally, after Melissa and I had moved and organized and rearranged and sorted, I found the box.

I wanted to keep a few sets of the baby clothes for my kids. The idea is that maybe if God blesses them with marriage and children, they might want a few of the outfits which they wore for their own children. So here I was, sorting through so many clothes. Many of the clothes didn’t seem memorable at all. Some had probably been gifts when the kids didn’t fit them yet. Others had the tags on and were still brand new. But finding the memorable proved more difficult than my own memories suggested. In the end though, I had what I wanted. A handful of memorable shirts, pants, and onesies.

This had required the removal of the clothes from their neatly folded homes of cardboard and plastic. Repacking wasn’t terribly difficult. Of course, I don’t fold as neatly as my late wife Robyn did. So those cardboard homes weren’t quite as orderly as they once were. But in a jiffy the boxes were packed and ready to be given away or taken to Goodwill.

But what didn’t pack back up so easily was the memories that were in those boxes. I remember sorting and organizing those boxes years ago with Robyn. As I sat in the home that we once lived in together, I saw many reminders of a life that no longer was. The clothes my kids wore when they were little. The plans Robyn and I had for the future. One moment a piece of clothing brings up a memory long forgotten. And the next moment hitchhiking memories arrived en masse, memories which had no connection to the baby clothes.

Like the nights I played Thomas the Train with my son. So many hours spent building tracks and lining up trains. Or memories of the family game nights spent around Sequence Junior or Catan Junior and the joy of those times. Then the deeper memories arrive. The plans for a bigger “one day” home. The day we finally got the keys to this now vacant house. The jokes about how we’d function one day in a retirement home with all our young friends when we all weren’t so young anymore. Vacations we would take. Traditions we would plan. All of it. All rushing back. And all at once.

But the task was now finished. I was sitting on the couch and the boxes were packed and put away. But the memories weren’t. They were still lying all around me in messy piles. They don’t pack up as easily or as quickly as clothes. The only thing to do was sit on the couch with Melissa, and have a good cry.

“It will be worth it all” Melissa sang. “When we see Jesus. Life’s trials will seem so small,” she kept the melody going, “when we see him.”

“One glimpse of his dear face,
all sorrow will erase.
So, bravely run the race
till we see Christ.”

I’ve often thought about running the race in the context of resisting temptation to sin. Or facing persecution and remaining faithful to the end. But now I see another way we must all run the race. Sorrow is yet one more path that Christians must trod as they follow their savior.

As we left the house, the words of the hymn began to attend the memories that were strewn around me. They weren’t packed up yet. They might never pack themselves away. The sorrow hadn’t left. But the truth of the hymn was there too. What seems so hard and raw and hopeless right now, will have a new description when we see Christ face to face. One day we will look back and say that these trials — all the horrors and pains and sorrows and injustices and everything in between — are just “light, momentary afflictions.”

Press on, dear Christian. Press on toward your Savior. Look not long at the trial which besets you. Weep and lament. But remember your Savior. One day, it truly will be worth all the pain and struggle. For one day, you will see Jesus.

2 Corinthians 4:16–18.

16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.

17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,

18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.