When I was in elementary school, living in Japan, I had a traumatic after-school mix-up. In my confusion upon arriving home to our front door slightly ajar and not finding my mom there like she usually was, I believed that my home had been broken into and my mom had been kidnapped.

What began as a slight misunderstanding (she was with our upstairs landlords/neighbors), ended with me crying uncontrollably at the local subway station where I thought I might find my dad coming home from work. After what felt like hours, one of the ticket collectors took me to the attached police station office, where I tried to tell them the elaborate story I’d created in my anxiety. They gave me tea and walked me home to find my panicked parents.

As an adult, I can still remember how completely alone I felt standing in that train station, unable to stop crying and shaking, feeling like I might float away from everything I knew forever.

Henri Nouwen wrote:

“When I trust deeply that today God is truly with me and holds me safe in a divine embrace, guiding every one of my steps, I can let go of my anxious need to know how tomorrow will look, or what will happen next month or next year. I can be fully where I am and pay attention to the many signs of God’s love within me and around me.”

Sometimes we have to go back to learn how to be where we are. And one way I’ve begun to do this as a spiritual practice is something called Rememorari Divina. Rememorari Divina is Latin for divine remembering.

This practice is something I’ve done for some time, without even knowing or naming it as an official contemplative spiritual practice. Essentially it is pausing to reflect and remember while inviting God into the remembering.

I’ve always been someone who has looked back and carried vivid memories around as if they were in my back pocket. I haven’t always known what to do with them. At times I’ve gone back to them searching for something: closure, a clue, or another take. Other times, I’ve felt like some memories follow me like a shadow — making it hard to see the gift of today.

At some point in my longings and wrestling with the past, I started inviting God into those moments with me. It’s changed the way this melancholy girl looks back, and that has impacted the way I am able to stay present where I am, and trust that God is with me.

Rememorari Divina could be a sibling of Lectio or Visio Divina. The difference in this practice is that the focus is on a memory instead of reading a passage of Scripture or looking at a work of art. There’s no “fixing” what was, or anything specific that happens through the practice — it merely helps me connect the dots between a memory and God’s love for me; it’s a tool to experience God’s presence with me as I look back and consider both then and now. It’s sort of like a time machine for the imagination.

Inviting God into our memories can build our trust of God-with-us in the here and now — wherever we find our feet, heart, and soul in this moment.

I think of Jesus with His disciples the night before He died, passing the bread and wine and telling His friends to “remember Him” and what these elements represented. Every communion is an invitation to practice divine remembering.

Even though I know how everything turned out with the memory of that fateful afterschool mixup, and it seems like it should be enough to know it all turned out “okay,” for many years, it just wasn’t. The fear I felt all those years ago, and the way I held onto that experience, and the questions that I had as a child stayed with me long after the seeming danger was gone.

Asking God to remember it with me and show me that I wasn’t alone, and am not alone now, has been mending and kind for my heart and soul.

Try it yourself:

Imagine your younger self or think about a memory. (It can be a joyful or difficult one.)
Focus on whatever image or feeling stands out, and ask God to show you your belovedness in that memory.

Include these breath prayers if you are comfortable:

Breathe in and pray: God-with-me, show how You were with me then.
Breathe out and pray: I was never separated from Your Love.

Breathe in and pray: God-with-me, ground me in Your loving presence right now.
Breathe out and pray: Nothing can separate me from Your Love.

When we practice divine remembering, we open ourselves to seeing God’s presence woven through our stories — not just in hindsight, but in a way that reshapes how we carry those memories today.

So whether your past holds moments of fear or joy, uncertainty or hope, know this:

You were never alone. And you aren’t alone now. God was with you then. God is with you now. And God will be with you always.

 

Listen to Tasha’s devotion here or on your favorite podcast app!

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