The year I turned eleven, my family packed up our belongings and left the neighborhood where the bulk of my childhood memories were held in a little yellow house with rose bushes growing against the backyard fence. After five years, we’d outgrown that yellow house and my parents had plans to build a larger home on the opposite side of town outside the city limits. But building a home takes time and money, so to cut down our expenses, we moved in with my grandparents while the new house took shape. Nearly an hour away from our school, church, and friends, my grandparents’ home was built into a hill overlooking a pond and included roughly sixty acres of mostly wooded land.
Gone were the long days of roaming our densely populated neighborhood on my bicycle with the neighbor kids. Gone were ice cream trucks, hastily planned slumber parties with my best friend next door, and the predictability of suburban life. Now, isolated in the country with only my siblings for friends, our days looked as different as they possibly could. My parents kept us in the same school to maintain friendships and as much normalcy as they could, but the long drive dimmed our social lives to a much lower wattage. My brother, sister, and I spent long summer days rambling through the woods, fishing in the well-stocked pond, and helping my grandmother pick blueberries off the massive bushes that lined the levy across the pond. In the fall, we spent even more time outside in the crisp weather, careful to watch for hunters in the woods. In winter, the pond froze solid and we slid around on its icy surface in our tennis shoes. In spring, the land blossomed and bloomed, the ground alive with baby frogs and grasshoppers. My grandmother’s garden held promises of the summer bounty to come. When I think of that year, I see lightning bugs and blueberries, dusky nights feeding the ducks on the hill while dragonflies skimmed the pond’s surface. The croaking and yipping of the frogs rattle around the edges of my memories.
When my oldest (now eighteen) was about seven, I took him back to my grandparents’ land. My grandfather had long passed away, and I missed him sitting in the wrought iron chair anchored into the side of the hill where he used to patiently bait my hooks or use his pliers to free an unfortunate bluegill. Just prior to that trip, my grandmother’s life had been swallowed by Alzheimer’s, and we gathered as a family to remember and revisit the many summer days we’d enjoyed there. I helped my son get settled with a reel and a bobber on the bank of the pond. I walked around a bit, trying to place my memories.
I didn’t mean to stay away, but living in another state, it was difficult to get back. Years passed, my grandparents’ land and home going to my aunt and uncle and their three sons. I like knowing it’s there and I can go back, but living hours away, I never do. On nights I can’t sleep, I walk the acreage, the woods, the perimeter of the pond in my mind’s eye until I can’t tell if I’m there or if I’m stepping into sleep.
I haven’t been back in ten years. But last week, I returned.
I took my younger son, nearly eleven years old, and I let him loose on the land that lives so green and bright in my memories. Armed with a fishing pole, he plopped down on the bank of my memories and pulled in bass after bass. My dad and my uncle helped him when he couldn’t get the fish off the hook and when the line snapped. Firmly entrenched into the bank is the wrought iron chair, empty and silent and loud. My grandfather’s chair. My aunt beckoned me to look around the house, especially the upstairs level where my grandparents had lived for so long. It was like stepping into a time warp. Nothing had changed. Nothing. I was eleven years old, running up the steps to see if my grandfather had a snack in the upstairs kitchen. But I was also forty-five, standing in the kitchen and touching the fruit themed wallpaper I used to pretend was scratch-and-sniff. My insomnia-led romps through the woods and the house were exactly the same but wholly different. At eleven, the memories were being born. At forty-five, the woods and the pond hold the weight of all I crammed into them when I lived there.
“It’s weird being back?” my mom asked me as we watched my son fishing on the bank. I’m eleven, standing on the bank next to him, telling him to keep his line taut before my grandfather does.
“It’s exactly how I remember it, but different, too.” It means more to me now.
I was thinking about the impossible green of the trees forming the edge of the woods as I flipped through my Bible the other day. I traced the familiar words of James 1, noting the promise of perseverance on the other side of trials. I memorized those verses decades ago, before I knew what trials awaited me in my adult years. I believed them, though. I felt the tiny pressing of minor pains in my golden childhood, and believed God would make my character through them. But, in the years since, I’ve revisited James dozens of times, each pass through deepening my understanding of what God can do with trials. James writes like it’s common knowledge—“for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.” It’s like he’s reminding his readers, you know, you know what God does with trials. So keep going. It won’t be wasted. God will make something good from something painful.
We come back to passages of Scripture we’ve studied many times, not because God’s Word changes, but because we do. We live, we learn, we endure hardship, we hurt, we question, we believe, we grow. So, that first pass through James’s words on trials prepares us for a few pain points. But then we go back after the bruise heals, and we realize James was right, because we’re still here, still walking in faith, still trusting God to grow our endurance. And then we walk through deeper valleys, sharper pains, longer sufferings, and we land back on James’s familiar words. For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and though the woods look the same, they are deeper with meaning and memories for what you have endured while holding those words in your heart. The bank still slants down into the red clay earth at the pond’s edge, but every pass through brings your understanding of the promised perseverance to the surface. It’s stronger than a memory. It is truth you believed before it became truth you lived. And it is truth that held up because the woods and the pond won’t last forever but God’s Word will.
My most recent revisitation of James 1 has settled deeply over my heart and my body. I’ve been dealing with a significant amount of physical pain that has not let up for a moment. I didn’t have the stamina to walk through the woods of my childhood last week. I am tired and the persistence of pain has discouraged me. But I keep rolling over in my mind the words I know so well—you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. I do know it. I know it better than the paths through the woods of my grandparents’ property. I lie awake at night trying to find a position that doesn’t ache so much and I picture the forest, the overgrown blueberry bushes on the levy, the best spot to fish on the banks of the pond. I was free from pain for nearly three years, but it has returned with sharper teeth. I know what God does with suffering. So I trust Him with this pain because I know in His providence, He works good from it.
It’s exactly how I remember it, but different, too. It means more to me now.
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Glenna Marshall is married to her pastor, William, and is the mother of two sons. She and her husband serve at Grace Bible Fellowship in Sikeston, Missouri where they have served for over twenty years. She is the author of The Promise is His Presence, Everyday Faithfulness, Memorizing Scripture, Known & Loved, Bible Study, and Praying in Pain.
