Menashe

The word Menashe is an interesting Hebrew word. It offers a  kind of redemption through holy forgetting — a spiritual amnesia. The word, means “causing to forget” or “one who makes forget,” and speaks to the grace of God that soothes old wounds and frees us from past traumas. Its root is the Hebrew verb nashah (נָשָׁה), "to forget," but the forgetting it describes is sacred — a help that lifts the weight of what once was.

Through the process of Menashe, God has gently covered my pain, not to erase it, but to redeem it. I have not been left bitter or broken: It invites all to move on. It echoes the voice of the Lord in Isaiah 43: “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

Menashe is that way in the wilderness — the grace to leave behind what held you, so you can walk freely into what God is making new.