I Choose to Forgive

I felt instructed to write about the recent injury to my heart by a former friend.  I say former, because since the episode she has avoided me almost entirely.  It reminds me of the movie  Out of Africa where a friend is talking about the man’s love for books and how another friend didn’t take care of a book he borrowed.  He had asked the man “So you would lose a friend over a book?” to which the reply came “No, but he did, didn’t he?”

I asked myself if I would lose a friend for the offense committed and came up with that answer.  “No.  But she did, didn’t she?”  This is not to say I will not be friendly or kind.  I will.  But history would indicate that the friendship is over.  If not, I shall be glad.

Writing it out in detail put the offense in perspective.  As I wrote, I assented to the wrongness of my former friend’s action and words.  It was just a fact.  I laid it out with all the frustration and malice I felt.  And then after the long expulsion I looked at it and wrote.  “I choose to forgive.”

And so without going through the entire story, I will give you some of my observances about forgiveness as it seemed to me based on both this recent event and some past events as well.  My hope is that you will gain some good thing that may help you through your own crisis of forgiveness in some part of your life.  Most of what follows is from the writing. 

I learned long ago that saying “I forgive,” is not a valid statement when it does not come from a process of mind and emotion, because the emotions will defeat the statement time and again until the mind brings a truthful resolution.  At that point, “I forgive,” means something different.  It means “In spite of the injustice, in spite of the right I may have to be angry and maintain ill will, I will let it go.  I will require no retribution or payment for the wrong committed.”

It has been over a month and I’m still angry when I think about it.  It hasn’t consumed my mind and emotions, but when I think about it I still feel enraged.  This writing is hopefully part of the healing process.  If I can logically submit my thoughts and emotions to the black and white of the written page, perhaps I can put it in perspective for forgiveness and healing. 

We made it through the day.  Life went on.  The pain of lost opportunity and incompetence have dulled.  But the sting of those words have not.  At some point, I felt I would need to confront her.  We had a campout coming up which it seemed would offer such an opportunity.  It did not. 

So, I have found myself in need of resolution.  In a perfect world, I would have an apology to precede my forgiveness.  That’s how the Bible says it should go.  “Leave your gift at the alter and go make it right with your brother –sister- and then come and offer your gift.” And yet I hear: “Forgive those who misuse you carelessly.”  So I will have no apology.

But I cannot wait on an apology.  To be conformed to the image of Christ, I may not continue without forgiving.  He said “Father, forgive them for they do not understand what they’ve done.”  And he said it while they were still doing it. 

And so I must look at the offense straight on with its sting and injustice and say “I will let it go.  I will require no retribution or payment for the wrong committed.  I choose to forgive.” 

It would be wonderful if I could say “Now I am free.  Now there is no more sting.”  But in reality, that just isn’t true.  It isn’t even possible.  Yet I know from past experience, that once forgiveness is granted, the sting, when it comes, will be taken with its wails to the Father and He will pick me up and sooth the pain and hold me to His heart again until it has passed.  Sometimes He will allow me to see a significance in the pain and a purpose in the offense.  Sometimes He will not.  But He will always be there in my need, in my pain.  I believe that is the only place where I am not required to follow Christ.  I will never be forsaken by my God.

So it is:  I choose to forgive.

There are those who say if you still hurt, if the act still makes you angry, you have not really forgiven.  I’m sorry, but that is just not so.  Harboring a grudge and feeling the pain of injustice are not the same thing.  There are some acts that can never be changed or undone.  They will always cause pain and anger –rightly so- while we walk on this earth.  We should never become ‘okay’ with some behaviors.  But to hold a grudge, to harbor malice, to be unforgiving is not in God’s plan for our life.  If someone gives your child drugs and that child becomes an addict and never finds the way out, you can forgive, but you will feel the sting of that action over and over.  You are not overcome by it, but it will hurt.  And if you have forgiven, you will take that hurt to the Father’s arms and walk out victorious though wounded.

True forgiveness does not make excuses for wrong or for God.  I’ve heard the most ridiculous statements about God applied to the horrendous acts of mankind.  God is righteous and true.  He cannot act outside of his love, truth, righteousness or mercy.  They are his very character.  But man can choose to commit stupid, thoughtless or even demented acts that go against everything God is.  Forgiveness must be applied knowing full well what the offense was and that it was wrong.  God does not do stupid, thoughtless, horrendous things but he does promise to work all things for our good.  That takes faith to accept without excuses or explanations. 

We must trust the character of God in order to forgive.  We must recognize the character of man while we forgive.  We are predestined to be conformed to the image of God’s son, our savior, Jesus Christ.  His forgiveness did not reduce the awfulness of sin, it removed the penalty of sin.  His death did not need explained to justify the character of God.  It considered fully the character of God. 

Knowing that the being he would create would rebel, knowing that the man he would create would be caught in that rebellion, God provided a way, a solution from the beginning.  His solution would satisfy every part of his character and offer mercy to all who were caught by the deceit of rebellion by the means of faith.  His solution would create a flawless kingdom, reclaimed from the ashes.  Forgiveness, justification, re-creation.

And so it is “I choose to forgive.”

A hole in my heart.

I have a hole in my heart, dug out by a thoughtless person who didn't even realize she was being thoughtless.   And yet, it simply uncovered a long term defect from a decades old injury that has plagued me often and crippled me at times.  

If it were a physical thing, they would assess it and see how life threatening it is and perhaps they would operate and close it up so that my physical heart would heal and function normally.  But for this emotional/spiritual wound, there is no procedure; yet it will need to be repaired and given space to heal.  I have begun the preliminary consultations with the great physician.

When I was a girl, I had a friend who had a hole in his heart.  He was weaker, less vital, paler than the other kids.  He tired easily.  But in all other ways, he was just one of the kids in our church.  In that day of waiting for medicine to develop and mature, -the early 60s- they were waiting for him to reach some stage or plateau before performing the operation which at that time was of itself life-threatening.  One day after an effort to keep up with the kids around him anyway, he died.  His heart could not take the strain.

Medical understanding has developed.  Procedures have been refined.  Open heart surgery is still open heart surgery, but I don't doubt that if he was a child today, his life would be spared.  Yet emotional and spiritual strength and injury have not advanced so far.

The recent injury was simply an irritation of the old wound.  And it must be opened and carefully repaired and then allowed to heal for the processes of living to be reasonable.  It's odd, but I had learned to live with the disability that the first wound caused.  I avoided certain things, I stuffed the anger and hurt away into boxes, gritted my teeth and then forced a smile to replace the grimace.

I had forgotten the hole in my heart.  But my heart had not.  Often my mind could not reconcile the anger and hurt that lay inside when some scene or action taken by another pricked at it.  I felt guilt for not handling life as though my heart were healthy.  There is a stigma attached to not being ‘normal’.  It is the stigma that killed my friend half a century ago.

Innocence bears a certain, yet sometimes faulty, protection.  Knowledge requires action.  Perhaps the recent injury, unkind as it was, was the mercy messenger to begin the process of healing.  And so it has begun.  I wish I could say it is done for we all want desperately to be whole, full functioning individuals.  But I am in the process and that is a better place than I was in before in spite of my loss of innocence, my fear and my pain.  I believe I shall be conformed to the image of God’s son.  It’s not an easy process at all, but it must be done and now is the time.

I hope to write one day and tell you it is finished and all the scars are healed.  I hope to run my own race with vigor.

The Lesson of Eutycus

 Can you fix what you break?

⁷ On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight. ⁸ There were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were meeting. ⁹ Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up dead. ¹⁰ Paul went down, threw himself on the young man and put his arms around him. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “He’s alive!” ¹¹ Then he went upstairs again and broke bread and ate. After talking until daylight, he left. ¹² The people took the young man home alive and were greatly comforted.

“I didn’t mean to break it.”  “Now that doesn’t really matter, does it?”  I’ve often had this exchange with my beloved granddaughter after a clumsy, inattentive moment brought some item into useless, irreparable pieces on the floor.  It is not meant to disparage or demean and she knows it.  The purpose of the statement has nothing to do with the broken item and she knows it.  We’ve discussed it before. 

Often, if I see her headed for one of those disasters, I will say “If you break it, will it matter that you didn’t mean to?”  It is an effort to bring her actions into the conscious realm and make her more aware of consequences for thoughtless behavior.  I hope it has an even greater long term effect than to protect my or her pretties from breakage.

Let me interject here that I am fully aware that things are not as important as people.  Nothing I have is as important to me as that blue-eyed wonder times 20.  My grandchildren are eternally precious to me.  For years my motto was “It’s only stuff!”  There is a reason why stuff loses value as soon as you buy it.  It is meant to be replaced.  But I saw a problem with thoughtless action and set out to do my part in making their world a better place.

Eutychus had no clue when he sat down in that 3rd story window that it could be the last night of his life.  I can’t blame him for dozing off.  I’m not good at sitting in one place and listening to even a television program without drifting off.  I carry a sketchbook so I can stay awake and listen in the church service.  But what if I knew it would be my last night on earth?  Well, I’d have a hard time sitting still for sure, but I wonder if I might just be a little more cautious of my actions.

Often we rush headlong into a discussion or a situation without giving thought to what we might ‘break’.  I had a horrid nightmare a few years back.  I was trying to help this young child who could not walk and nothing was working and I cut off the child's leg.  Standing there in horror at what I had just done, I said 'How am I going to fix this?"  It was a disturbing dream and I woke unsettled and full of questions.  In the end, I realized some profound truth in the considerations.  Among those concepts discovered was the question "Can we mend or heal in the event that we wound or destroy?"  Paul rushed down and covered the boy.  He took him up alive and people were comforted.  I imagine the boy didn’t sit back down in the window for the rest of Paul's discourse and it says the people in that crowd were ‘greatly comforted.’  But what impact do you suppose the event might have carried into the days ahead.

For me, each time I warn my granddaughter, it is a warning to myself: “Consider the outcome of your actions.”  I still make impulsive mistakes.  I still break things thoughtlessly, so does she.  Yet sometimes I hear her say to herself “Be careful,” or “Slow down,” and I wonder if in her mind the thinks “If I break it the fact that I didn’t mean to will not make it unbroken.”

Now, if we can carry that outside the realm of trinkets, toys and dishes.

A People at War

If we didn’t know better, we would say our country is at war.  Resources and services are threatened and withheld.  We are ordered to comply or suffer.  What does that sound like to you?  Invading kings would often withhold services.  They would not allow food or supplies in.  They would stop up the water sources and sanitation.

I got into a study this morning based on the reports and cries of the common man against our government.  With what are we being made to buy our society back?  Healthcare!  But so much more than that in reality.  Think about what they are saying and doing.  Think about what they are withholding from themselves.  Nothing.  They are not threatening their own income and savings and freedoms.  They are supposed to be our public servants, but they serve no man.  Our own insurance is being depleted and changed by their grand idea.  Their insurance is so expensive, we will have nothing left. 

They are set on redistributing the wealth, but what happens when they all but destroy our economy and no one but the government has any wealth.  Do you really think they have our best in mind?  Come on; think!  Look at the patterns.  Look at the present actions.  Are we really ready to ‘believe whatever they say just because ‘they’ say it and they have us in a bind?

It is bad enough that we are told “Your government will be shut down unless you comply.”  But the truth is this is a precedent that we cannot afford to set.  Are we to be held hostage every time there is a disagreement on our rights and freedoms?  Are we to be ‘shutdown’ unless we comply and give up our say?  Are we to become a government by the few, the powerful made so by puppeteers?  Are we ready to become a society subject to a ‘divine right’ ruler not seen since the French revolution?

Do not think they will not try to tell us how and what we may believe once they have told us what we may and may not say and do.  Do not think that they will not determine who we may be, what we may have and who our children may become if we allow that.

If you think I am overreacting, stop drinking your tea and start looking around.  This is not a video game that you can reset if you lose.

A wise king in Israel after being told the plan of attack said “Is there not a man of God that we can ask?”  Hmmmm.  Perhaps we must all become ‘men and women of God’ attuned to a different voice, led by a different ethic. Perhaps we should be ready to give an answer that makes sense and yet sometimes God's answers are based in a different kind of 'sense'.  Perhaps prayer and more are required of the people who really believe in God.  Perhaps it is time that we found out what we are called and equipped to do in our world.  If it is prayer, do it with sincerity.  If it is politics, do it with integrity.  If it is management, do it with fairness.  If it is revolution, do it with righteousness.

It is not time to complain, but it is time to evaluate.  It is not time to cry, but it is time to assess what we can do to retain what freedom we have left.  Wisdom must come forward.  People must be given hope and led forward.  I’m tired of the whining and sarcasm.  I want truth and action.  Who will bring it?  We must open our eyes, open our minds and get busy.  It will not be easy.  But we do have precedence if we are Children of God.

Mau-edge brings us togever

Mau-edge is what bwings us togever today.  That bwessed dweam above all dweams.

6 months of preparation, a church wedding, professional photographer, restaurant food, expensive cake, DJ, hall rented, 4 attendants on each side.

A quick decision, backyard wedding, photos snapped with a phone, homemade refreshments, a few friends and family gathered to celebrate at home, a single friend on each side.

So what is the real issue?  Both couples are happily married.  Neither is saddled with a wedding debt.  Both sets of parents are tired but proud of their children.  Both brides were beautifully attired.  Both grooms were enthralled with their beauties.

What will they remember?  What will they forget?  What will they endure?  How will they endure?  Mama and daddy pray for their happiness and success.  Mama and daddy pray for their happiness and success.

I am old.  It is evident in the pictures.  I wore myself out.  It is evident in the pictures.  I was personally unprepared.  It is evident in the pictures.  As I look at them, I see the joy and the love.  They are sweet; they are sad.  There are things that time, no doubt, will erase and other things time will amplify.  When you are a moving target, you can pull it off.  But the camera freezes action, moments, states of being, lumps, droops and disfiguration.  People think cameras don’t lie, but they do.  I see it all the time.  I teach people that when they are using photographs as resource.  So why could not the camera have lied just a little bit in my favor?

Looking though it now from 2 weeks out, there are winces.  But there are smiles.  I can overlook the bride’s mother for the love and joy that existed in about every corner.  I see the things that were missed or wrong.  I remember the scramble to get it in place and fixed.  I see the not quite.  But I see the so right.

It is all a part of the process, the human frailty, the divine provision.  The mind works to explain.  The heart works to accept.  Moments of anger or frustration are replaced with the sweetness.  Some things still incite emotional discomfort.  But hopefully even those will take their place in the good with time.

What was learned, in a practical sense, will probably never serve us well, for with the grace of God, there will never be a need.  I am old.  I shall never pass this way again.  I knew that going in.  I knew that coming out.  I don’t even know if I could have done it differently.  I don’t know that it really matters when all is considered. 

And yet it does teach us.  It reveals the sweet imperfection of our dreams; it shows us our inner flaws and failures.  It woos us to the Father of all.  It links us to age old questions.  It requires acceptance, humility, grace and a sense of humor.

Mau-edge is what bwings us togever today.  That bwessed dweam above all dweams.

If I were a rich . . er . . . woman

I have seen two or three documentaries and once even a short lived reality show about people who win the lottery or sweepstakes and the effects it has on their lives.  I’ve never really seen a good effect.  Yet, I must admit that all those stories had one thing in common.  A poor man or woman with no money management skills and great financial need won the ‘big one.’  Within a year in most cases, the person’s life was destroyed, he had as little or less than before and was much worse off because most of his family and friends had become his enemies.  One man I saw still had a stipend from it, but wouldn’t let the interviewer show his face or location.  He had to move away from his former home for his own physical and mental safety.  He was sad and frustrated by the way it turned out.

Many of those people were trying to sell the fancy ‘toys’ they bought to pay the bills generated from such.  They were clinging to the most ridiculous relics from their spending binge.  Eyes hollow, they faced their former conditions, but without the innocence and hope that they had before and often without friends and family.

As a young mother, most days I had barely enough to go around for each day.  My family did not go hungry, but life was hard and more than once I was humbled by the lack around me.  Yet, I was never one to live in a mental state of lack.  I made do and I found ways to get by.  I sewed; I painted; I taught private music lessons.  For a time I was hired on to teach art in a non accredited program from a good university.  Granted, I never turned it into a fortune and it required skill to stretch what I had to even be adequate.  But I made it happen and there was always enough –barely enough- but enough.

Yet I can remember hearing the tales of people who won those large amounts from sweeps and lotteries and thinking “If only I could win….”  How would it have changed my life and the life of my family?  One of my favorite musicals is “Fiddler on the Roof.”  And of course one of my favorite moments is when Tevea sings “If I were a rich man…”  The song strikes a chord, for who hasn’t dreamed of being free to have, free to go, free to help? 

My father always said “Life is a series of trades.  You trade your day, your energy, your ability, your life force for money which you then trade for food, clothing, entertainment, transportation.”  He always told me that money has no value except what it can be traded for.  He was solvent.  He did much good with his money.  He had what he needed for a life of adventure, love, dreams and joy.  He kept a portion, saved for the unexpected and he gave a good amount away.  To me, he was the ‘rich man’ everyone admired, yet by many standards he was not overly successful. 

My grandfather was a gentleman farmer.  He owned a huge herd of registered cattle, his own machinery, grew his own cattle feed and paid cash for everything he bought including the machinery and new cars.  Yet to know him, he was a simple man who worked hard and lived without finery.  His motto was learn what you need to know, work hard, plan well and wait as long as it takes.

I have asked myself how receiving a huge amount of money all at one time would change my life.  How would it change the relationships I have?  Would it destroy me?  When you ease into wealth, or fight your way in as some would say, you have opportunity to adjust to the having.  Those around you learn to adjust to your wealth as well.  They accept your right to give or not give them what they want.  I think one reason is that slowly acquired wealth changes your surroundings slowly.  It changes your circle of friends and acquaintances.

But wealth gained quickly seems to spur demands from other people.  If you walked into a windfall, why shouldn’t they.  If you didn’t go through the process of learn, plan, work and wait, why should they have to?  I think of Alfie P Doolittle saying “I touched everybody I knew, now everybody touches me.”  And “No. A fiver will be plenty, more than that and it makes you feel responsible.”  In the movie it makes us laugh.  In life, not so much.

So what if I gained a fortune over night?  I can say it would not change my life much, I’ve always thought I would just go on working and living simply, but would I?  We live a comfortable life in a livable home.  We have needs and bills and we juggle and prioritize to get it all done.  So I ask myself, is the reason I don’t have a fortune because I haven’t learned and disciplined myself to an adequate level?  Would simplicity still call me?  Would I be hated by family and friends in a short period of time?  Most of all, could I be trusted to listen to my God for when, how and how much?

If I were to receive a windfall fortune, what would my life be in a year?  In the end, it is a trade.  Money is still only worth what you can trade it for.  The Bible exhorts us to trade if for incorruptible wealth.  And the questions remain.

Just thinking.