I was fuming, but I knew I needed to get over it. She hadn’t done anything terrible but the circumstances had been such, that her carelessness had left me feeling abandoned. Why didn’t she see it? Why was she so sure that she had done nothing wrong? I knew there was no use in spilling my anger all over myself with pouting and festering for everyone to see. I drew a smile out and replaced the hollow it had left in my pocket with my little wound. I discretely, but forcefully, stuffed it down so that nothing would peek out, or worse, fall out without my knowing.
Hurts are like that sometimes. Some of them are easy to overlook. They sting for a moment, causing me to wince from the pain, but just like a child allows a tickle to distract from a scratch or a bump, I move on without a care once I am busy enough and caught up in my adult distractions. Those pats on the back, jokes and sarcastic jabs that tickle somewhere beneath my heart. It is forgotten and I don’t speak of it again.
More often though, I am guilty of reaching into my pocket and letting my fingers brush over my broken piece of flesh, finding the details and intricacies of it’s shape so I am able to justify, if only to myself, why I feel heavy inside. I hang on, ensuring there is a legitimacy to what I feel so that I can make my case when there is enough quiet to speak up about it.
Some days though, that quiet opportunity never comes. The tiredness, that probably caused the hurt in the first place, pulls us to slumber rather than to speak and I am forced to make a choice. Shall I forgive or shall I fester? I know there is really no option but forgiveness if I can ever claim that I am capable of loving.
But how? I can throw that hurt from my pocket, I can stuff it into the garbage and burn it with the trash and still feel the prick of it’s sharp edges at any given moment. Forgiveness coaches me to continue throwing it out. To take each thought captive, to think on the things of Ephesians 4, to love actively instead of passively and to seek peace and pursue it. One hour I am free and the next I am reaching again for more coaching, more victory, as if I’ve slipped to the bottom of a ladder I have no strength to climb. Forgiveness bids me shake the dust again and again from my feet and try again. How many times did Jesus say to forgive? 70 times 7 was it? I used to think He only meant continuous and repeated offenses, now I see He could have been talking about a single one. I will do it. I am actively doing it. I will continue forgiving, loving past the mistakes of others, until the hurt is only a washed up lie that tries in vain to get my attention.
I lay down that night still painfully aware of one unfortunate moment, but determined that forgiveness has done it’s work. That the sun going down will not carry me with it entangled in a web of wrath. Instead I will rest in the light, believing that the work of forgiveness is not bound by what is said or felt, but rather what has been laid at the feet of a Savior. He makes me lie down in green pastures. Growing pastures, where life is evident and not lacking, where still waters shimmer nearby and I am confident once again that goodness and mercy are not outpacing me, but faithfully follow me all the days of my life.
Mary, this is awesome. Thank you for sharing it. You are so good at putting into words those emotions and internal struggles that we all go through, and sometimes stagnate in before we reach the correct solution.