the mountain descent

This morning I went on a hike. Piestewa Peak. It's one of my favorite hikes, about a mile--a very steep mile-- to the summit, where you sort of scramble to the jagged top of it. My friends and I feel some sort of vicarious link to Moses when we stand up there, red faced and catching our breath, half-hoping to hear the voice of God or maybe see a trail of Him in the landscape.
The way down is less of a mind-over-matter victory, but it's still very nice because you get to actually talk. I know I've had good conversations descending the peak, though I can't always remember them. The fresh air and pounding blood circulation and feeling of achievement is conducive to very stimulating discussions, about morality and literature and God and psychology.
My boyfriend and I were going down the first set of Mordor-like steps carved into the rock, and he commented that he imagined us being taken down by eagles, just like Sam and Frodo, which would be "incredible".

And we started thinking about why they were taken down by eagles, and I think it has more behind it than sparing them the physically wearing descent. I think they were also being spared the memory of the worst parts of the journey; they were escaping the terror of having to relive every deathtrap, every mental collapse that took place in the crevices of that mountain.

I have some friends who experience flashbacks. I've never had to go through something like that, a nightmare vision that is so real, your brain recreates the sensory experience you had, since its the brain that creates the the experience in the first place, synthesizing all the information taken in by each of the senses. It's just as vivid as the first time you went through it, the first time you were burned in the fire or almost drowned, or whatever happened, and you even feel the pain all over again. I would never wish this on anyone. And yes, there are some things that we need to call to remembrance because those experiences make us who we are and take us back to better times and change our futures. But some things we understand the first time, and it would be a blissful existence to never remember them again.

I believe God delivers us from some memories; He definitely has the power to, and if its His will, it's what's best for us. This could have happened to me, but obviously I would never be able to tell of it because I wouldn't remember what would have been taken out of my index of memory in the first place. And now I don't know what to think about that brand of psychology where your old tramautic memories are drudged up from the sea floor of your mind, and you have to feel all the hurt and pain again so you can address it. I think God can heal us from those things without us having to go through them all over again. (I'm talking more about terrible wrongs done to people, things that make you so broken that even the scars hurt.) There's also the matter of fabricating memories and that hurts more than just you a lot of times, and things get really messy.

Isaiah wrote (perhaps on a mountaintop?) that "Those who wait on the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint." Maybe we can apply this even to the struggle that goes on inside our own heads; that desire for revealing the source of any kind of pain, the meaning of any kind of memory. Rather than reliving and reliving and trying to descend into the depths of that memory ourselves, what if we waited for Him to form it perfectly in His hands? What if we waited on Him, and He carried us swiftly away from the memories of our sins and the sins of others? What if we kept running from them without looking back, pressing further into His kingdom on earth? Then we wouldn't be weighed down with the exhaustion of carrying all that personal history, that baggage of emotional experiences we don't need to relive anymore. He will deliver us from recreating those experiences in a subtle, but just as beautiful way, as flying us down from the mountaintop on the backs of swift, enormous eagles.