lynn-guistics

When my brother and I were preteens, our family attended an Easter service at Tallowood Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. The pastor's sermon on that special Sunday in the life of the church was entitled, "Remember No More," and spoke of the promise God makes to His children - that He will "forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." During his message, the pastor shared with the congregation a number, then challenged us to do our best to forget the number he'd shared, just as God forgets our sins. In the weeks and months following that sermon, someone in our family would ask, "What was the number we were supposed to forget?" and, in unison, we'd immediately shout out the same number. Years later, the topic of this sermon would inevitably be raised and still, we all remembered that number. The implications were clear and two-fold: 1) forgetting can be a difficult undertaking, and 2) our family is not adept at following ins

My mom was a lover of sitcoms. Throughout the years, we spent many happy times together in front of the television, entertained by shows designed to help viewers find humor in the everyday stuff of life. One of Mom's favorite programs was Golden Girls, which centered around the lives of Rose, Blanche, Dorothy, and Sophia - four widowed "seniors" living together in Miami. These golden girls were aging gracefully, and discovering along the way that joy and laughter can be experienced even in the midst of life's difficult moments. Each week, the show's creators and authors wove tales of these four characters wrestling with some sort of life predicament, their distinctive personalities on display as they grappled: Rose, innocent and optimistic; Blanche, bodacious and flirtatious; Dorothy, skeptical and sarcastic; Sophia, wise and witty. By show's end, these golden girls had endured and emerged from their hardship no worse for the wear; on the contrary, the challen