We read these stories of memorable moments. We call them defining. In many ways they are. The miracles define the lives of those who experience them. And the curses - the illnesses, and deaths of which Jesus cures people - they are themselves definitive. The bleeding woman, the dying child, the dead man. Is this life defined? A collection of maladies and miracles, of blessings and curses - bullet points and highlights, the things found in an obituary.

But my life is filled with so many unmemorable moments - daily, hourly, I am doing things the details of which get forgotten almost immediately. It's the things that happens after the thing happens.

I have written and preached and spoken repeatedly about the day my father died. I have detailed at length my conversion experience on a seaside trail in Italy. I have gleaned my parents' divorce, my wedding day, and the birth of my children for sermon material. A collection of curses and miracles that I call definitive. But right now I am thinking about picking my kids up from school.

The days I've done this bleed into one another, my memory of them is an amalgamation. I don't remember any specific time I locked eyes with one of my children as they made their way out of the school building, any specific time they broke into a run toward me, any specific time they tried to knock me down with a hug. But it has happened so many times, so consistently, so unmemorably, that it has begun to define me.