Today I’ve been trying to think of a moment that stood out to me as fantastic and worth sharing with you sweet people, and I gotta tell you, folks, it didn’t come to me.

But there’s a moment that I’ve been thinking about this week that I just simply can’t seem to remember…and that’s a good thing.

You see, this month marks the 10th anniversary of the worst day of my life. In fact, it’s been a gloomy anniversary every year for a decade, it’s been preceded by weeks of depression and self-hatred, and followed by several more weeks of depression and deep regret. Yes, people, even with my perky smile and happy face, I’d been carrying around a sick, dark cloud with me each October. I guess I’m a pretty good faker, huh? Forgive me.  

The dark mood that has been married to that dark day in early October for so long has actually shifted from completely black to lighter shades of grey over the past several years. But this week, for the billionth time, something made me think of that day,  and all of a sudden I couldn’t remember the exact date. I even thought pretty hard about it, thinking that I really should remember something so important and life-altering. I thought and I thought, and though I know it was in early October, I simply could not recall the number on the calendar.

“…I will forgive their wickedness  and will remember their sins no more.”

The God who created me and everything, the one who sees my thoughts from afar and knows when I sit and rise and when I come and go…who knows the very words I will say before they are ever resting on my tongue…the God who knit me and every other human being together in our mothers’ wombs, the God who knows the number of hairs on my head…THIS God is the one who has chosen to forget this day in my history, and has allowed me to begin to forget the details which no longer matter to Him, and therefore should not matter to me either.

What love. What incredible mercy that I am being shown with this sprinkle of amnesia. Thank you, God, for doing everything to show me that I am new. Thank you for blotting out my sins….for pushing them as far away from You as the east is from the west….Thank you  for shoving every one of my sins down to the ocean floor.  And as if that wasn’t good enough, thank you for telling me that there will one day not even be an ocean that contains them!

God has made it very clear to me that He is bringing to life the words of Joel 2:25 in every corner of my life. He’s made it clear that He will repay the years that the locusts have eaten, and this is just one more way that He is keeping that promise to me. I am a loved woman. A very well-loved woman. By my husband, by my dear friends. But none of that comes close to the way I am loved by this incredible God, who pursues me and in fact has always been pursuing me…I am so loved by Him that He’s helping me blot out even my own transgressions.

How deep the Father’s love for us,
How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure