What a Rare Brain Cancer Is Teaching Me about the Art of Remembering and Forgetting

In February of this year, I was diagnosed with a rare type of brain cancer. I am, quite literally, one in a million. A seizure brought me to my knees and was the catalyst for the discovery. A brain biopsy and a craniotomy followed in the days and months after. I went from being independent and in the prime of my life, just on the cusp of turning forty, to being dependent, unable to drive, living with family, and staring down the face of a life-altering diagnosis that is presently incurable. My tumor, well over two inches wide, sits in the right frontal lobe of my brain near the motor control strip, impairing most of the movement on the left side of my body. When I woke up from the craniotomy in April, I could not so much as wiggle my left toes or lift my left hand off the hospital bed. Even two months later, I didn’t have the strength to open a Ziploc baggie or the motor control to type with both hands.

Looking back on the months following the surgery, which were filled with countless rehab and doctor’s appointments, my memories of that time are like the Bermuda Triangle—memories went in, but most have never come out. I’ve sent out mental search parties to see if I can find the wreckage but all I come back with are remnants of debris—hazy, vague, and tattered around the edges. A doctor’s appointment here. A hard conversation with my family there. And then nothing but vast expanses of open water and tears in between. So much has vanished from the recesses of my brain, maybe to never surface again.

Perhaps it is more of a gift of grace than I realize that those memories haven’t surfaced and remain at the bottom of the mental ocean. Even the prophet Isaiah commends God’s people to forget the former things, “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert” (Isa.43:18–19). As harsh at it may seem, maybe cancer is the “new thing” springing forth in my life, if only I would have eyes to perceive it as such rather than rail against it. I hold fast to the truth that he is making a way in this wilderness season, and maybe it is for the better some memories from those months are lost, perhaps forever. Maybe the mental search parties can quit working overtime.

On the other hand, some of my memories are very vivid. I remember my first seizure well, as the type of seizures I experience impact only one side of my body, and I never lose consciousness. I had a string of four seizures in the space of two weeks in late May, and I can recall every one of them. Why does my brain remember some memories, but forget others? There’s obviously a science behind what our brains do and do not remember, especially concerning trauma, and people far smarter than I can unpack that elsewhere. I’m more interested in how all this ties into our spiritual ability to remember and forget.

There’s a long list of things I’ve been asking of God since February, like healing, strength, coordination, and recovery of cognition. However, in more recent months, one prayer has chiefly risen to the surface, one which echoes bits of Isaiah 43: “Help me remember what needs to be remembered and help me forget what needs to be forgotten.” This is a multi-faceted prayer. On one side, it’s very practical. My brain has literally forgotten how to coordinate movement on the left side of my body, recall facts, and do basic mental math. (My apologies to any waiters I’ve shorted on tips.) There are some things, quite plainly, I need my brain to remember how to do in order to function in life.

The other side of that prayer carries deeper spiritual undertones. What do I need my brain to remember about the character, nature, and sovereignty of God amidst the chaos of an incurable cancer diagnosis? What do I need to remember about who I am as his child? What do I need to forget about my fears, anxieties, and the pain of a busted, broken body and a proud, sinful heart? When pain and tragedy strike, we are usually so quick to forget the character and nature of God. Like the ancient Israelites, our spiritual amnesia sets in rapidly. One minute we are walking through parted waters on dry ground (Ex.14:22), and the next we are complaining about how much better we had it back in Egypt as slaves with our meat pots (Ex. 16:3).

I know I certainly forgot the faithfulness of God in very short order. I don’t know how I’m going to make it, I kept thinking to myself. Every day following my diagnosis felt like an all-out dog fight, physically, mentally, cognitively, and spiritually. Anxiety and depression, perhaps reasonable human responses in the wake of a life-altering diagnosis, were chasing me at a very rapid clip, threatening to consume me. I was white-knuckling my grip on God and my faith, but the trajectory of my life suddenly felt like it was caught in a riptide, swallowed up in never-ending waves of grief, sadness, and anxiety. Everywhere, tears. I would cry my way through one rehab appointment after another. I would cry my way through appointments to sign consent forms for radiation and chemotherapy, then leave feeling bloodied and bruised,  like I had been battered on the shores. And as much as my memory holds glimmers of those moments on the edges of my brain, I know I certainly wasn’t remembering much about God and his grace and mercy to carry me through them.

If you pay close attention, you’ll find that large swaths of the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament, emphasize acts of remembering and forgetting. God consistently instructed the ancient Israelites to remember things about him and also warned them about the dangers of forgetting him, notably Deuteronomy 8: “And you shall remember the whole way that the LORD your God has led you. . . . Take care lest you forget the LORD your God by not keeping his commandments. . . . then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. . . . You shall remember the LORD your God . . . And if you forget the LORD your God and go after other gods” (Deut. 8:2, 11, 14, 18, and 19).

This is the art of the Christian life: reconciling what needs to be remembered with what needs to be forgotten—concerning both our faithful God and our sinful selves.

Jesus and his disciples point us to this reconciliation of remembering and forgetting at the Last Supper and the days that follow Jesus’s death. As Jesus—a real-life flesh and blood reminder of the Passover Lamb—instructed his disciples as they took the bread and the cup, he told them, “‘Take this, and divide it among yourselves. For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.’ And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me’” (Luke 22:17–19).

After doling out the wine and bread, Jesus heads for his death. He is crucified and buried in a tomb, only to be found missing from that very tomb three days later, his body resurrected. Two angels appear to the women who went to the tomb, saying, “‘Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.’ And they remembered his words” (Luke 24:5–8).

The angel is exhorting them to remember, which conversely means they had forgotten. There it is, the spiritual amnesia. One minute, the disciples are drinking the wine, eating the bread, sitting next to the living Passover Lamb, and the next they are running for their lives, forgetting every word Jesus spoke to them.

How quickly they had forgotten.

How quickly we forget.

What do you need to remember about God’s character and nature right now—whether you’re experiencing abundance or famine, brain tumor or no brain tumor? What have you forgotten about his faithfulness, goodness, and kindness toward you? What do you need to remember about your sinful, proud heart?

My brain may never remember every part of this ordeal, and maybe it doesn’t need to, but may it never forget God and the way he has led me through this desert these last six months and nearly forty years of my life.

God, help me—help us—to remember what needs to be remembered and help me to forget what needs to be forgotten.