Psalm 31 – Dealing with, and Healing, that Forgotten Feeling

I am forgotten: gone from memory

like a dead person — like broken pottery.

— Psalm 31:12 (HCSB)

Blessed is that season of life that takes us from notorious to forgotten; to know that it takes time for people to forget our sins against them.  But blessed also is that time in our lives when we experience such a loss as to be continually forgotten, so we may find that, as broken pottery, or as a dead person, we can survive without the accolades of men as we recognise we already have the accolades of God, by His gracious Presence.

But going from feeling forgotten — only remembered by God, which is no small ‘only’ — to being happy in that fact-of-our-being, is a huge adjustment to make.  Huge, and healing.

Feeling forgotten isn’t a bad thing if we remember God never, ever forgets us.  And if our faith is true, knowing He never forgets is all we need to remember.

Feeling forgotten, so far as David the psalmist was concerned, was an astonishingly lonely feeling.  David feels ostracised even as he would walk past those who know him.  It left him feeling consumed, or brought to an end of himself.

Such a feeling reminds us that we’ve supposedly lost everything we truly value.

It feels that way.

But feeling that way also, in the same frame, negates all the rest of our lives that God has provided for, not least our protection, which is the theme of Psalm 31, which David attests to in verse 23, even in his lament.

Feeling is central to both the solution and the problem; the solution, by being real with how we feel; the problem, in that we cannot stay there if we hope to heal.

Dealing with our feelings requires awareness and recognition, but then we need to find a way of courageously, wilfully letting them go to God.

We have to be prepared to let of feelings if we’re to be healed; if we’re to deal with the perception we’ve been forgotten — because the truth is we’re not forgotten by the most important Rememberer.

It’s blessed to take a risk to let go.

So…

Dealing with our feelings brings us to kneeling which is healing.

© 2016 Steve Wickham.