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We Have This HopeWHTH exists to equip others in the art of remembering Gods work in their lives and the practice of telling others about it. Author: Emily Curzon
WHTH exists to equip others in the art of remembering Gods work in their lives and the practice of telling others about it. wehavethishope.substack.com Language: en Genres: Christianity, History, Religion & Spirituality Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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So I Won't Forget...February 2026
Thursday, 5 March, 2026
Hi friend! I’m Emily. I’m so glad you’re here! I’m a former therapist turned writer and theology student. In the early mornings and middle minutes while kids are at school, you can find me in my home office writing about hope, grief, spiritual practices, and Biblical literacy—all things that have changed my life and light me up inside. Today’s email is part of a monthly series I’ve been writing for over 2 years called So I Won’t Forget. It’s the overflow of a life full of the goodness of God and the simple way I practice remembering as a spiritual discipline, something I talk about a lot. It’s my most read and most personal writing. I hope you’ll stick around! What am I supposed to do with you, February? The more iterations of So I Won’t Forget I churn out over the years, the more I notice the subtleties of the seasons. More than any other month, February is somehow both confusingly too short and requiring of more grit. Dare I say that February is littered with more holding out for the next thing than even late August? I think it does and I’m bothered by it every year as I sit to write these essays.This is likely the reason you’re receiving February’s edition in early March. That and the paper I had to write for seminary last week that conjured up many long-buried feelings of paper-writing dread and hovered squarely on my shoulders until late Thursday when I finally pressed “submit.” I wonder what long-buried feelings tried to sneak through the cracks of your exterior this potentially grueling or boring February? Or what sat on your shoulders so comfortably, you’re just now beginning to notice it was heavy after all? Whatever the case for you, I wonder if you might practice a little remembering this month. Find a quiet space, take a deep breath with your hands laid open in your lap, and ask God to bring to the forefront of your mind the moments when you may have missed His goodness. By way of the Spirit, I’m confident you’ll find them.Here are mine. This is February and these are the things I don’t want to forget. #1…A million questions with a side of bad breathThere’s a speed by which my youngest daughter navigates the world. We used to joke that she had an on/off switch. She was either moving her body or she was asleep, no in between. As she’s grown from toddler to full-blown kid, her busyness has developed a bit more nuance, as personalities have a tendency to do. She can melt your heart with a fierce running to jumping hug and turn right around to incite a riot over where everyone is sitting at the dinner table. Meek she is not and I say that with a sort of womanly pride. Give me all the strong daughters.Except no one warns you that the real work of raising strong daughters is cultivating your own layer of thick skin because their strength comes with a side of brutal honesty. One that lacks the scaffolding of age and the skill of what professional communicators call “the compliment sandwich.” That’s right, no free compliments unless they want to borrow something from your closet, look at your phone, or want you to stop for a slushie on the way home from school. Last week, after spending the majority of the my time hyper-focused on a seminary paper, which is code for I left it all on the field intellectually-speaking, I solidly switched to mom-mode and spent the remainder of my afternoon chasing everyone around the house. Sometimes literally, but more metaphorically. I had almost nothing left to give when my youngest found me in the fleeting quiet moment of unloading the dishwasher and fired off a round of questions that went something like this:Her: Can I have a snack?Me: What have you had already?Her: I don’t know. Can you see if so and so wants to play?Me: Get something from the pantry, no candy please. They aren’t home from school yet.Her: Can I have a popsicle? Can you see if so and so wants to play? Watch this! (Cartwheels across living room)Me: I can text their mom. No popsicle, get something from the pantry. Her: What’s for dinner? Can we have mac and cheese? Will you play with me? Me: Chicken sausage and veggies. You had mac and cheese for lunch, remember?Her: Uuuuuuggggghhhhh, there’s nothing to do. Will you play with me? I’m going outside. Anyway, did you brush your teeth today? If I were to re-write the story of that conversation, I might have her say something along the lines of “Mom, I see you working really hard this week. Why don’t you finish unloading the dishwasher while I grab a string cheese independently from the refrigerator? I’ll even shut the door when I’m done. I’m headed outside to peacefully invite my siblings to play! Love you, Mom!”But that is a world I will never live in and the reality is I’m not sure I actually want to. It’s the real zingers in life—the ones that do occasionally feel like a kick when you’re already down—that remind us we’re not machines and neither are the people who live in our homes. This essay is not going the way of machine critique, but it is a plug for the irreplaceable resource that is our humanity, namely the humanity of our children who offer to us the kind of refining you can’t buy in a store or ask a computer to generate. Had I brushed my teeth that day? Yes, but in truth it had been a solid 10 hours and I most certainly had bad breath. Did I need to be reminded in that exact moment? Who’s to say other than the one whose lack of filter keeps me humble? No one could have delivered the feedback quite like her. #2…Out of the depths of Flu BSpeaking of humanity, a moment of silence for the flu that raged war on my body and the bodies of many people I love this past month. I hate being sick. And sure, the obvious response is to say no one likes being sick, but please hear me when I say I truly haaaaattttteee being sick. I’ve spent years cultivating an attitude of defiance toward the whole notion of needing to cancel my plans and do the annoying work of convalescing. I have an advanced degree in “it’s probably just allergies…” and somewhere out there I have a husband reading this and rolling his eyes. Alas, February got the better of me and I’m here to report it was not just allergies. It was Flu B and it kicked my butt. I tumbled head first into the hazy world of intermittent naps and sweaty sheets and wondering what time it was and whether the sun was shining. I had a post-viral headache for days long after I resolved enough was enough and proceeded with my regular life in spite of feeling like I’d been run over.As I type this I’m reminded of the many I know who suffer from chronic pain—my sister was one of them—and I have zero room to talk. My body managed the viral onslaught as is customary of a healthy immune system so I will not pretend to hold my two weeks of angst up as a memoir on suffering. But I did walk away with a slightly changed perspective on what it looks like to slowly exhale my need for care from others. That’s what it felt like—a slow exhale. Breathe in: There’s so much I need to do. Breathe out: Yet all my needs are met.Isn’t that the great irony of being a person safe within the Kingdom of God? There is truly much to be done, a great work ready for our participation, yet it is simultaneously a work headed in the same redeemed direction whether we hop on board or not. I think the grace of the occasional sickness might be this exact reminder. At least, it was for me this month and so my earbuds are attuned to the words of this song while I go about my day free from a headache, yet keenly aware of my need for God to hold my whole life, physical body and all, together in the center of His love. #3…Sideline siblings & another note on basketballWe attended approximately 438 basketball games this season. That’s a rough estimate based largely on feelings rather than actual data (my kind of math) and it translated to a ton of what I affectionately call sideline sibling activities. I know this rings true for all younger siblings and perhaps a few oldest who aren’t yet able to drive or stay home alone. We have all of that going on at our house so I like to think we’ve mastered the art of grabbing shoes, audiobooks, doodle pages, and a snack while toppling into a van already littered with the things we just shoved into our tiny, random bags. Toward the end of the season I started to pay closer attention to what was happening behind all the literal and logistical noise. Here are a few things I observed…* Makeshift pickleball using an old ball and a rope. * 4 boys piled in closely over the pages of a Space book. * A million trips to the bathroom with friends. No one is more knowledgeable about rural Oklahoma upper elementary bathrooms than my kids. * Collaborative doodling. * Smacking. * Sharing of Doritos—sadly the most healthy snack choice available. I’ll never understand the nacho cheese. * Baby doting of the most precious kind. It’s magical to be only 7 and think you’re the cool older kid. * Yelling and then asking why we’re yelling. * Shared celebration and shared disappointment. * Learning each others’ names and then remembering them the following week. Last week I listened to the most incredible podcast episode at the behest of my husband and one our dear friends. It’s an interview with Ben Sasse, an impressively credentialed former senator and university president who recently announced a terminal pancreatic cancer diagnosis at age 53. I’ll not be able to do justice to the episode by written summary, but suffice it to say this one will make you feel things. When reflecting on his ongoing work of “redeeming the time,” Sasse said this: “You can play a lot of basketball in the last 60 seconds…” I spent all week thinking about it and I’ve come to the conclusion that if that’s not true, what are we even doing?This season of sporting for our young family has been full to the brim. I can’t say I wouldn’t do a few things differently because I would. I’d holler less about getting in the car quickly and I’d care much less about the outcomes of games with scores even now I can’t remember. But I can say we played a lot of basketball, the fullest kind, the real kind that included sidelines and siblings and snacks and sometimes questioning everything. This ball and hoop game at its worst develops a little grit and at its best teaches us how to live. I know what sounds hyperbolic, but I really believe it. Listen to Ben Sasse put a bow on it and tell me I’m wrong. Don’t forget tissues. As always, I get to the end of these and feel profoundly grateful to anyone reading to the very end. Please don’t stop here though. I have two asks: 1) Take what you see here and try your own hand at it. Maybe writing is not your jam, but I contend even the non-writers can make remembering a discipline. Like all worthy habits, the results are in the long haul so you should probably get started…do you have a journal nearby? 2) Consider reading through my guide for studying Proverbs. I’m rolling it out over the entire semester so you can take what you see and go slowly…no rush, no pressure, just a resource for you that I’ll keep offering for free! This is a public episode. 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