A Short Story Inspired by Psalm 103:2–5
The list had been hanging on Daniel Mercer’s refrigerator for almost eleven years.
It was written on an ordinary sheet of yellow notebook paper, wrinkled at the corners and stained with something that might once have been coffee. A faded magnet shaped like a lighthouse held it against the stainless-steel door.
At the top, written in Daniel’s handwriting, were four words:
Things I Must Remember.
Beneath them were twenty-three numbered lines.
Some were simple.
1. Anna’s birthday — March 12.
2. Pay the electric bill before the 18th.
3. Mom likes lilies, not roses.
4. Never leave the gas tank below a quarter.
Others were stranger.
8. Call people back.
11. Apologize quickly.
14. Don’t make promises when angry.
And then there was number twenty-three.
23. God has been good to me.
Daniel had written that sentence eleven years earlier.
He had almost forgotten why.
At fifty-seven, Daniel had become very good at remembering the wrong things.
He remembered every mistake.
He remembered the afternoon he lost his temper with his daughter when she was sixteen. He remembered the business decision that cost him nearly half his savings. He remembered the last conversation with his father before the old man died and the impatient way Daniel had said, “Dad, I have to go. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
There had been no tomorrow.
Daniel remembered the hospital room where his wife, Anna, had spent three months fighting an illness that had nearly taken her life.
He remembered fear.
He remembered failure.
He remembered regret.
But somehow, over the years, he had forgotten grace.
On a rainy Tuesday morning in October, Daniel stood in his kitchen staring at the refrigerator.
The house was quiet.
Anna had already left for work. Their children had been grown for years. Outside, rain traced crooked paths down the windows while the coffee maker clicked softly behind him.
Daniel opened the refrigerator, stared inside, and realized he wasn’t hungry.
He closed it again.
That was when the yellow paper caught his attention.
Things I Must Remember.
He smiled faintly.
Most of the list was obsolete now.
His mother had been gone six years.
His daughter lived three states away.
He had sold the car that was never supposed to go below a quarter tank.
But number twenty-three remained.
God has been good to me.
Daniel stared at it.
Something inside him resisted the sentence.
“Has He?” Daniel whispered.
The kitchen offered no answer.
Three months earlier, Daniel had been laid off from the engineering company where he had worked for twenty-two years.
The explanation had been polite.
Restructuring.
Market conditions.
Organizational efficiency.
The words had sounded clean and reasonable in the conference room. They had felt much uglier when Daniel carried a cardboard box of personal belongings across the parking lot.
Since then, he had applied for forty-seven jobs.
He had received six interviews.
No offers.
His savings were shrinking.
His confidence was disappearing even faster.
Every morning he woke with the same heavy question.
What happens if nothing changes?
Daniel pulled the yellow paper from beneath the lighthouse magnet.
He carried it to the kitchen table and sat down.
For several minutes he simply looked at number twenty-three.
Then his phone rang.
It was his daughter, Emily.
“Dad?”
“Hey, sweetheart.”
“You busy?”
Daniel glanced around the empty kitchen.
“Terribly.”
She laughed.
That sound alone lifted something inside him.
“I wanted to tell you something,” she said.
“What?”
“You’re going to be a grandfather.”
Daniel said nothing.
“Dad?”
He covered his mouth with his hand.
“You serious?”
“Very.”
A laugh escaped him, followed unexpectedly by tears.
Emily laughed too.
For the next twenty minutes, she told him everything. The doctor’s appointment. The due date. Her husband’s stunned expression when she showed him the pregnancy test.
When they finally hung up, Daniel remained at the table.
The rain continued falling.
The circumstances of his life had not changed.
He was still unemployed.
The bills were still waiting.
The future was still uncertain.
But something had entered the room.
Joy.
Small, bright, undeniable joy.
Daniel looked again at the paper.
God has been good to me.
He found a pen.
Under number twenty-three, he wrote:
24. Emily is having a baby.
He stared at the sentence and smiled.
Then another memory came.
Anna in the hospital.
Not the machines.
Not the fear.
Not the night the doctor had warned him that things could become serious.
Daniel remembered something else.
He remembered bringing Anna home.
He remembered helping her slowly through the front door while neighbors stood along the sidewalk holding handmade signs.
WELCOME HOME, ANNA.
He remembered Anna crying.
He remembered how she had slept for almost fourteen hours that first night.
He remembered waking before her the next morning and sitting beside the bed simply listening to her breathe.
Daniel wrote:
25. Anna came home.
Another memory surfaced.
His son, Michael, calling him at midnight five years earlier.
“Dad, I messed up.”
Michael had been struggling with alcohol then. There had been lies, broken promises, anger, and months when Daniel wondered whether he would lose his son entirely.
But Michael had asked for help.
Recovery had not been quick.
Nothing important seemed to be.
There had been counseling, meetings, relapses, apologies, and difficult conversations.
Now Michael had been sober for four years.
Daniel wrote:
26. Michael got another chance.
He paused.
Then corrected himself.
26. Michael received many chances.
Daniel leaned back.
He understood something.
So had he.
He thought of the mistakes he carried like stones.
The argument with Emily.
The failed business investment.
The harsh words spoken to Anna during difficult years.
The pride.
The selfishness.
The prayers neglected.
The opportunities wasted.
Daniel had spent years remembering his failures without remembering forgiveness.
He had remembered the debt but forgotten that mercy had been paying it down all along.
He wrote:
27. I have been forgiven more times than I can count.
The words blurred.
Daniel wiped his eyes.
The phone rang again.
This time it was his friend Marcus.
“You sound terrible,” Marcus said after Daniel answered.
“Good morning to you too.”
“I’m serious. You okay?”
Daniel hesitated.
For weeks, whenever anyone asked that question, he had said the same thing.
Fine.
But he wasn’t fine.
“No,” Daniel said.
There was silence.
Then Marcus said, “Talk.”
So Daniel did.
He talked about losing the job.
About money.
About waking at three in the morning.
About feeling useless.
About being fifty-seven and wondering whether the best parts of his life were behind him.
Marcus listened.
When Daniel finished, his friend said, “I’m coming over.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
Forty minutes later, Marcus arrived carrying two breakfast sandwiches and terrible convenience-store coffee.
They sat at the kitchen table.
Marcus noticed the yellow paper.
“What’s that?”
“My memory.”
“Looks unreliable.”
“It is.”
Daniel handed it to him.
Marcus read the list.
When he reached number twenty-three, he stopped.
“That’s a good one.”
“I forgot it.”
Marcus looked at him.
“Then remember again.”
Daniel looked toward the window.
The rain was beginning to stop.
“I don’t know what happens next,” he said.
“Nobody does.”
“I could lose the house.”
“You could.”
“I might not find another job like the one I had.”
“You might not.”
Daniel frowned. “You’re terrible at encouragement.”
Marcus smiled.
“I’m not promising you everything will work out the way you want. I’m reminding you that losing one chapter doesn’t erase the whole story.”
Daniel looked down at the list.
Marcus continued.
“You’ve been through worse things than unemployment.”
Daniel thought of Anna’s hospital room.
“Yes.”
“And you’re still here.”
“Yes.”
“Anna’s still here.”
“Yes.”
“Your son is sober.”
“Yes.”
“Your daughter just told you she’s pregnant.”
Daniel stared at him.
“How did you know?”
“Emily called my wife ten minutes after she called you.”
Daniel laughed.
Marcus pointed at the paper.
“You keep remembering what almost destroyed you. Maybe start remembering what carried you through.”
The words stayed with Daniel long after Marcus left.
That afternoon, Daniel walked through his neighborhood.
The storm had passed, leaving the streets shining beneath a clearing sky.
Near the edge of the subdivision stood a small park with a pond. Daniel walked there often, though lately he had stopped noticing much.
Today he noticed everything.
Children jumping in puddles.
A woman throwing a tennis ball for an exhausted golden retriever.
Leaves trembling with rainwater.
Clouds breaking apart above the western horizon.
And high overhead, circling slowly against the blue, an eagle.
Daniel stopped walking.
The bird rode the wind without appearing to struggle.
It rose, circled, and rose again.
Daniel watched until his neck hurt.
For reasons he could not explain, he began to cry.
Not because everything was fixed.
Nothing was fixed.
But he realized he had been living as though the darkness of the present had erased every kindness of the past.
It had not.
He had been wounded.
But he had also been healed.
He had fallen.
But he had also been lifted.
He had sinned.
But he had also been forgiven.
He had walked through places that felt like graves and somehow discovered that God could still lead a person back toward life.
Daniel returned home before sunset.
He sat at the kitchen table and placed the old yellow sheet in front of him.
There was barely any room left.
So he turned it over.
At the top of the blank side, he wrote:
Things I Must Not Forget.
Then he began.
1. Forgiveness is a gift.
2. Healing sometimes comes slowly.
3. Being rescued does not mean you were never in danger.
4. Love has carried me farther than fear ever could.
5. God has provided enough for today.
6. Life can begin again.
He stopped.
Outside, the clouds had become streaks of gold.
Daniel thought about the eagle.
He wrote one final line.
7. An ending can become the place where God teaches you to rise again.
Two weeks later, Daniel received a phone call.
It was not from any of the forty-seven companies where he had applied.
It was from a small nonprofit organization that helped young adults learn technical trades.
Marcus had mentioned Daniel’s name to someone who worked there.
They needed an instructor.
The salary was considerably lower than Daniel’s previous job.
The office was smaller.
The benefits were ordinary.
The work was different from anything he had imagined doing.
Daniel accepted.
Six months later, he stood in a workshop surrounded by twelve students learning how to diagnose electrical systems.
One of them, a nineteen-year-old named Caleb, stayed behind after class.
“Mr. Mercer?”
“Yes?”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
Caleb stared at the floor.
“You ever feel like you’ve messed up your life so badly that there’s no fixing it?”
Daniel became still.
He could have answered quickly.
Instead, he pulled out a chair.
“Sit down.”
Caleb sat.
Daniel sat across from him.
“I’ve felt something like that,” Daniel said.
“What did you do?”
Daniel thought about the refrigerator.
The yellow paper.
Anna coming home.
Michael getting sober.
Emily’s baby.
Marcus arriving with bad coffee.
The eagle rising above the wet trees.
“I learned to remember,” Daniel said.
“Remember what?”
“That failure isn’t the only thing that gets to tell your story.”
Caleb looked confused.
Daniel continued.
“You remember the mercy too. You remember the people who stayed. You remember the doors that opened after others closed. You remember every time you thought life was over and discovered there was still another morning waiting.”
Caleb was quiet.
“And if you’ve done wrong,” Daniel said, “you don’t pretend it didn’t happen. You face it. You make things right where you can. You ask forgiveness. And then you learn that grace means you don’t have to spend the rest of your life living inside your worst day.”
Caleb nodded slowly.
Daniel smiled.
“You’re nineteen. Your story isn’t finished.”
Years later, the original yellow paper still hung on Daniel’s refrigerator.
It was now covered on both sides.
Beside it were photographs.
Emily holding her daughter.
Michael celebrating ten years of sobriety.
Anna standing beside Daniel on their thirty-fifth anniversary.
A group of students from the training program, all wearing safety glasses and grinning at the camera.
And one photograph Daniel had taken with his phone at the park.
It showed a distant eagle against an enormous blue sky.
The picture was not particularly good.
The eagle was little more than a dark shape.
But Daniel kept it anyway.
Whenever life became difficult, he would sometimes stand in front of that refrigerator and read the old list.
He never stopped having troubles.
There were illnesses.
Funerals.
Financial worries.
Disappointments.
Days when prayers seemed unanswered.
Days when the future frightened him.
But he had learned that faith did not require pretending those things were small.
Faith taught him that they were not the only things worth remembering.
There was also forgiveness.
There was healing.
There was rescue.
There was compassion.
There was daily bread.
There were second chances.
There were ordinary mornings when sunlight entered the kitchen and reminded him that darkness had not been given permanent possession of the world.
And there was God.
Faithful through every chapter.
One morning, many years after he first wrote the list, Daniel’s granddaughter stood beside the refrigerator.
She was eight years old.
“Grandpa?”
“Yes?”
“What’s this?”
She pointed to the old yellow paper.
Daniel smiled.
“That’s a list of things I didn’t want to forget.”
She studied the faded writing.
“Did you forget them?”
“Some of them.”
“Then why make a list?”
Daniel looked at her.
“Because sometimes remembering is something we have to practice.”
She considered this carefully.
Then she pointed to number twenty-three.
“What does that one say?”
Daniel bent down beside her.
Together they read the faded words.
God has been good to me.
His granddaughter looked at him.
“Is that still true?”
Daniel looked around the kitchen.
At the photographs.
At the wrinkled paper.
At the evidence of years filled with both sorrow and mercy.
Then he looked through the window.
Far beyond the houses, the morning sky stretched wide and bright.
“Yes,” he said softly.
“That one is still true.”
And somewhere beyond the rooftops, carried by a wind Daniel could not see, an eagle rose into the morning.
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