Kimberlee Conway Ireton

Last December, my friend Susan gave me a little black book. On the first page, in her beautiful handwriting, she’d written “Kimberlee’s Ephesians Memory Book.” On each subsequent page, she’d pasted in six to ten verses from the book of Ephesians.

I’m not sure what prompted me to ask her to make me this book, other than that I saw she had one. Call it mimetic desire, if you want. That’s surely part of it.

I expect that another part of it was that in my sleep-deprived state, I felt brain-numb and fuzzy, and I wanted some concrete way to fire my tired neurons and get them moving and shaking, get the blood circulating in my brain again.

But perhaps the biggest part of it was sheer desperation. I was so scared last year, and the root of my fear was that God felt absent, even non-existent. So perhaps I thought that if I could just internalize enough of the Bible, I’d be able to feel God again. I’d be able to believe without doubting, without fearing.

Each page in Susan’s little book represented a week’s worth of memory work. If I stuck to the schedule, I’d have the whole of Ephesians memorized in 24 weeks. I’d have a whole book of the Bible wired into my brain, running on smooth little tracks like the Chunnel train, and come hell or high water, I’d be okay because I would know God was real.

But it didn’t quite work out like that. For one thing, I just couldn’t keep up such an aggressive schedule – more than one verse every day. Nope. Not in my intensely lactating and sleep-deprived life.

For another, after a month of memory work, my fear was worse than before, with panic attacks rather than the words of Scripture rolling through my body like that Chunnel train.

Oddly enough, I didn’t give up. I’m not sure why. Call it God’s grace. Call it stubbornness. Call it pride. Whatever. It doesn’t really matter.

What matters is that week after week, I memorized a verse or two, until I’d memorized the whole book. All six chapters. Every last word.

It took me almost a whole year to commit Ephesians to memory. But you know what? That doesn’t matter, either.

What matters is that at the beginning of December last year, I knew three verses from Ephesians (because I say them to Jack every night as his bedtime blessing); at the beginning of December this year, I knew 155 verses: not bad for a sleep-deprived woman with four kids, two cats, and an endless pile of laundry to fold.

And that’s really my point: if I can do this, anyone can. It’s just a matter of wanting it enough to actually do the work.

Today is the feast day of St. John the Evangelist, author of a Gospel, three epistles, and the book of Revelation. How fitting, then, that today is also the day I invite you to consider joining me as I memorize 1, 2, and 3 John in 2012.

In mid-January, I’ll reiterate this invitation and include a template for you to download and print. After that, I hope to send an email each month to encourage those of you who decide you’d like to join me.

For now, I’m asking you to prayerfully consider over the next few weeks whether this is something to which God may be inviting you. A strong sense of yes! I want to do that is a pretty good indication. But a strong aversion or resistance is probably also something you’ll want to pay attention to.

next time: 3 things I learned while memorizing Ephesians (or, why you, too, can memorize an entire book of the Bible)

Tags: memorization, spiritual practices