(I wrote what follows five years ago and laid it aside until my Dad was in Heaven. Dad read everything I wrote and I did not want to cause him any grief, even if inadvertently. The children are now 12 and almost 15, but nothing else has changed.)

This week we made some memories for our grandchildren. Our son Neil’s three children — Grant, nearly 10, and twins Abby and Erin, 7 — live one mile from us, and consequently we see them several times a week. During the Easter break, my wife Margaret and I decided to treat them to a train ride to Birmingham, then rent a car and drive 60 miles north and visit my parents for a day. The rail trip took 7 hours, a long time for children of this age who needed to be reminded not to ask again “how much longer.” We took along books to read, games to play, a picnic lunch, and snacks, and managed to get through the ride just fine. The girls got a lot of lap time with Grandma and Grandpa and everyone napped for an hour or so.

At my parents’ home, the kids became better acquainted with cousins and aunts, they explored the deep woods and meadows, discovered baby puppies with their eyes still shut, plus kittens, wild turkeys, a possum, and the obligatory farm dogs. They’re still talking about it.

Building memories for a child is a grand enterprise. Somewhere I read of a father who had to back out of his family’s ski vacation into the Rockies due to the unexpected demands of his job. Reluctantly, they started on the long drive without him. When his work wrapped up earlier than expected, he made plans to join them. Since he knew where each day’s drive was taking them and where they were spending each night, he flew to the city ahead and hired a taxi to drive him miles out the interstate and leave him. An hour or two later, as the family whizzed by in the loaded-down van, they spotted a familiar figure with his thumb in the air. “Was that Dad?” “That couldn’t be Dad!” “It was! It was Dad!” “Turn around.”

Later, when a friend asked him why he went to such trouble to surprise his family, the man answered, “Just think — for the rest of their lives, my kids will be talking about their crazy, wonderful dad!”

Unfortunately, not all family memories are so idyllic. Some families go through such pain that the memories are better off forgotten. Choosing what to retain and what to release can be an art. But it is always a choice.

My father turned 92 on April 13. As the oldest child in a large family, he dropped out of school at the age of 12 and went to work. Two years later, he began working inside the coal mines of Alabama alongside his dad, doing the work of a man for full wages. When his parents borrowed money from the bank to build a house, what Dad brought home went toward the note. A few days after the final note was paid, his mother — my wonderful, saintly Grandma Bessie — kicked him out of the house. The story, as he tells it, had to do with the constant strife between him and the brother 2 years younger, Marion, whom everyone called “Gip.”

Dad was telling me recently that he has trouble sleeping. “I wake up in the middle of the night with old things on my mind,” he said. Like what? Like the time his mother asked him to leave home. “It wasn’t right,” he said, and added, “I lie here sometime with things like that on my mind.”

As a long-time pastor, sometimes counselor, and always devoted son, I said, “Dad, Grandma had a houseful of children. She has to have been stressed out all the time. She did not have the time or energy to go into who did what and which one of you should leave. She just wanted peace.”

He sat there silently listening. I continued, “And think about this. She knew that if you left home, you could take care of yourself, but Gip couldn’t. In a way, it was a compliment.”

No response. So, I tried another approach.

“Dad, even if she did wrong by ordering you out of the house, you just have to forgive her. Everyone makes mistakes in raising their families. I did. You did. I’ve gone back and asked my children to forgive me for things I did or didn’t do when they were growing up.”

Long pause, while that soaked in.

Then I said, “Dad, did you ever make any mistakes with your children?” Any one of his six offspring could have recited a litany of his mistakes, all of which we have surmounted and forgiven. Dad said, “I can’t think of any.” I almost choked. But, I was not wearing my prosecuting attorney hat that evening and felt no need to remind him of his fatherly failures. He did a thousand things right and perhaps twenty-five wrong. That’s a pretty fair average.

Eventually, I said, “Dad, you just have to let it go and forgive Grandma.” In all the years I knew her, Grandma was an outstanding Christian woman with a heart of compassion and an unwavering faith. The family still tells of the time during the Depression after she had been widowed, when she gave her last five dollars to help the preacher’s family, then received a check in the mail later that day for several times that amount. Her faith is legendary in our family. Surely Dad could overlook the times she got it wrong.

What goes on inside the mind of the elderly as it dredges up old grievances long buried and breathes new life into them? Are these never confessed sins and never forgiven slights belatedly appearing before our own personal bar of judgment? One of my nieces said the other day, “If I have heard about Grandma Bessie kicking Pop out of the house once, I have heard it a dozen times.”

My sister was standing nearby and said, “What Dad doesn’t say is that the next day, Grandpa George came after him and brought him back home.” I had never heard that part of the story before.

Ah, the sinful mind — working overtime to harass and accuse, to rob us of sleep and deprive us of peace. No wonder the ancient prophet said, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) Anyone who looks to his own mind for peace about the past and assurance for the future is playing a fool’s game.

The same prophet was told by the Almighty that in order to become God’s spokesman, he would have to learn to “extract the precious from the worthless” (Jer. 15:19). That has always been man’s challenge in this world, in his use of time and resources, in his relationships, in deciding what to retain from the past.

A young woman watched as an older woman in her church spoke kindly to a church member, one who had severely wounded her in years past. The young woman called her to one side and said, “I don’t understand that. After all that woman did to you, for you to be so kind to her. And she has never apologized. How can you do that?”

“It’s very simple,” said the old woman. “I distinctly remember forgetting it.”

Note: Dad went to Heaven in November of 2007 at the age of 95-plus. My impression is that over the last year or two of his life, he seems to have found peace about the bad memory that would not go away. I relate the story here only in the hope that it will minister to some reader who needs to turn loose of the past. If God has forgiven it, we may also. Hebrews 10:17 is a great promise. God says, “Their sins and iniquities I will remember no more.”