“You may say to yourselves, ‘These nations are stronger than we are. How can we drive them out?’ But do not be afraid of them…” (Deuteronomy 7:17-18, NIV).

     “The ache for home lives in all of us,” Maya Angelou once wrote. Likewise, the home of our youth is not as large as we reminisce. Both of these maxims were at play yesterday as my wife and I visited the house where she was raised.

     The front yard was smaller than Cathy recalls. The backyard was diminished by a privacy fence. The driveway was cut shorter and narrower than her memory elicits.

     I can relate. When I returned to my high school for a reunion, I wondered who left the building out in the rain. It had shrunk.

     It happens to all of us. Our memories keep the proportion between our smaller stature as children and the size of the places we once lived. Our strides were shorter. The spaces seemed longer. The places we occupied appeared larger.

     I believe a similar phenomenon happens with the people we once knew. We remember the cheerleader who lived down the street as arrogant. We recall our older brother as a bully. We call to mind the friend who betrayed our trust. Each of these people was bigger than life. Their memories loom large in our minds.

     Yet as we grew older, our perceptions of these persons changed. We came to learn the cheerleader struggled with anorexia. We now understand that our brother was criticized and belittled by our father. The friend who let us down had a mother who frequently broke the promises she made.

     These people are not the evil monsters we remember. Like all of us, they suffered from the frailties of the human condition. As a young nation, the Jewish people struggled with a misperception of those who occupied the Promised Land. Israel recalled her enemies as being larger and stronger than she was. Yet their fears were unfounded. In fact, Israel’s adversaries were just as terrified.

     The Irish playwright, Oscar Wilde, once said, “Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.” The good news is that the weight of our recollections needs no longer be a burden. Remember, the memoirs in your mind are smaller than they may appear.