Forgiveness

I totally understand the concept of forgiveness. I really do. However, I still find it a struggle. Do you?

Recently there was (what in my opinion) was a major mix up. I do understand that it really was a misunderstanding. But, it still hurt my feelings in a major way. I've forgiven, but I find that it still hurts. I've prayed about it and it still hurts. It still makes me want to cry.

Maybe it is like a physical wound. It may have been accidental, but it may still physically hurt. I'm not angry. Just hurt. I'm not quite sure what to do with that hurt. But maybe like a physically injury it will go away with time.

Any thoughts?

My Oddest Birthday Present

As most of you reading will probably know, I turned 40 recently -- December 15th to be exact. For the 40 days leading up to my birthday, I blogged about something I was grateful for. On the 12th, some friends gave me a surprise party. On the 16th, my friend Jill and I spent the day together. The 40 days were a great reminder for me to be grateful for what I have. I loved the party and my day with Jill. Overall, it was a good birthday.

On the 15th I got, perhaps, the oddest present I could get. It came in the form of an email from a woman at church. Earlier in the summer, I had interacted with her over a topic. While I wasn't angry with her, that isn't how I came across. She was emailing me after several months to let me know how much that interaction still bothered her.

Honestly, I was surprised. My instinct was to go into defense mode -- a mode I operate out of a lot. Before I could go into lock down, God's voice rang through. "This is how you lived your first 40 years. How will you live your next 40?"

I am convinced that only His Spirit could compel me to immediately type the following

Thank you for the email. I am sorry for how things transpired. None of it was ever about you. But I do recognize that it may have hurt you. Would you be willing to get together with me and perhaps Jill or someone else to talk this through?

I would really like to resolve it and apologize in person.

We were able to meet today. I think it was a good time of sorting through things and bringing some closure to the issue. But it was hard and scary going into it. I've had a lot of anxiety thinking about it since that email and didn't sleep much at all last night thinking about meeting today.

The woman was totally unaware that it was my birthday the day she sent it. But I do believe it was an odd sort of birthday present, because God's presence spoke so quickly and swiftly in the moment of reading and responding and set in motion the possibility of meeting and reconciling today.

I prefer warm fuzzy, birthday greetings -- but this one provided the opportunity to bless me and help me grow but also, I hope, to bless her.

Vengeance vs. Forgiveness -- Hope Chronicles 71

Awhile back I read Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult. She does not write to a Christian audience, but I have really liked some of her stuff. Change of Heart was not one of my favorites. Yet it still had those "ah -ha" moments that made me think.

The premise is that a pregnant woman's husband and child are murdered. The murder is on death row and wants his heart to go to the woman's second child. As you will have guessed needs a heart transplant. In the book, the mother, June, asks the following questions:

Would you give up your vengeance against someone you hate if it meant saving someone you love?

Would you want your dreams to come true if it meant granting your enemy's dying wish?

Humanity has a great need for vengeance. We want to see the wrongs righted. We want people who hurt us to pay ounce for ounce back every bit of hurt and suffering they have caused.

Humanity has a great need for vengeance, but Christianity has no need for it. Yes, being human, we still want to see people pay for what they have done to us. But Jesus calls us to something higher, something better. He calls us to give our hurts and even our hopes to Him and let Him do the sorting out. Yes, our enemy may in the end get his dying wish, but we would only rob ourselves and the ones we love if we lived by vengeance instead of forgiveness.

But forgiveness is hard. My father was very abusive while I was growing up. He has never asked forgiveness for what he did. I must admit that I still harbor some bitterness about everything he robbed me of and even the angst it has caused with other family members. But I do not actively seek revenge. I leave that all with Jesus. To that extent I have forgiven.

Yet, the question is one my pastor has asked in his own life. He had an abusive step father who late in life responded to an altar call. His first response was, "No, you cannot forgive him, God!" But like me, he has had to learn to leave the balance of it all up to God.

There is the rub, isn't it? With the cross their is no balance. It's all lopsided because Jesus paid the price for all of it. Because of that lopsided balance, I have hope. Without it, I would never be able to come to God. Coming to Jesus, isn't that worth giving up our sense of vengeance?

Following Up And Is She Runs on the Horizon?

So, this is my official follow-up to my post about my interaction with my ex-roommate last Friday. If you don't have the foggiest what I am talking about, just click here. I just called her at work because that's the only way I knew for sure she would answer. I asked her if she could have dinner tonight. (I know last minute.) She said she couldn't but next week would work. We settled on Wed. but need to firm up the plans later.

So, will all of you pray? Seriously, I felt incredibly awkward just in asking. And now I feel tearful. I know it is because it ended so poorly. Yes, it is a slow obedience on my part. I probably should have listened to God last week, but I didn't. All the nerves might be over with if I had! If you will pray, please leave your name. It would be a great encouragement to me. I'd love to have 10 people praying for whatever God might do?



PS. As Joy noted on my last post, I went from cookies to pie. I looked back and it was worse. I went from pie to cookies to pie in 3 consecutive posts. Can you tell what is on my mind while people like Lysa, Renee, Melissa, and Holly are all exercising? Heaven help me, they are bold enough to post exercise pictures and commit to things like half marathons. Oh, my, you don't suppose they'll add a track to She Speaks and call it She Runs? But I suppose after worship Sat. night Lysa could lead everyone in aerobics . . . .

I suppose the only "good" part is that I only had pie on the first occasion (note that I ordered a half slice). When I made Mark's pie last night, I only ate the 5 sugar, cinnamon coated slices that I just couldn't make fit in the pie crust. Really. I dropped the pie off this afternoon without cutting a slice out to test it. (Oh, dear. I do hope it is edible! Wink.)

A Different Boy -- Hope Chronicles 58

Forgiveness has been very much on my mind lately. About this time last year, it became clear I needed to ask forgiveness from several people for something fairly major that involved a good deal of trust. I do feel as if I have been forgiven by some. They have let me move on from it, chosen to trust me in spite of all that had transpired. But there are others who say they have forgiven me but always pull up short of placing their trust back in me.

But I need to confess that last week I flubbed up the forgiveness thing as well. I had a roommate for awhile. We lived together about 18 months. Very suddenly, she decided to move out. I was hurt in the way it all happened. She told me that we would still be friends because, "You (meaning me) are good with keeping up with people." I had to express my doubt because I knew from watching her with others that she rarely returned phone calls and emailed even less. It's hard to keep up a relationship from one side. Knowing this pattern, I didn't even try.

I was so hurt that I didn't think I could stand to be here during the actual moving out process. I asked her to put Katy (I didn't have Mali yet) in my room and shut the door. Katy is a relatively shy cat. While I doubted she would come out with all the noise and new people around, I did not want to risk her darting out the door.

I retreated to a friend's house for the evening. When I came home, they were still moving things out. I had thought that if they were still in the process, I might offer to help with the last of it. I went up to my room first. To my horror, my door was still open and Katy was nowhere to be found. My hurt turned to fury. I searched for Katy for 20 minutes before finding her way back behind a dresser. All the time, my anger built. I knew if I said anything to my roommate, I would say all the wrong things. So, I didn't even go down to the basement to wish her well or say, "Goodbye." I just went to bed.

No, that was not very good of me. The scare over Katy just really pushed me over the edge. My friend stopped coming to church all together. There have been no phone calls, no stopping by.

Recently, I found a Fed Ex package on my deck addressed to her. Sigh. Knowing I would more likely get a response by calling her at work, I dialed. It took a minute for it to sink in as to who I was. She thought I was asking to speak to her office mate named Amy. I explained and told her that a package was on the deck if she wanted to come get it.

God: "Why don't you ask her to have dinner?"

Ignoring that, I did manage to say, "So, how have you been?"

My ex roommate: "Not really so great. My aunt died and things aren't going well."

God: "Ask her for dinner."

Me to God: "Why?"

Me to my ex roommate: "I'm sorry to hear that. I hope everything else is going well."

Ex roommate: "Not really."

God: "Because I forgave you."

Me to my ex roommate: "Sorry to hear that. Anyway, the package will be on the deck."

Anyway, the package will be on the deck? No, I did not score high in the compassion part at that moment. Not even, "Maybe we could talk a bit when you come to get it."

Clearly, there is some forgiveness on my part that needs to happen. I have not let her move on from all of that.

It has all gotten me thinking about change.

The mark of a good book is that you cannot wait to see how things end up but become sad when you find yourself nearing the end! Perhaps it is even more true when there is a good series. As you may know, I've been reading the Chronicles of Narnia from beginning to end. There are seven. I felt my heart sink a bit to find that I am ready to begin the last book -- The Last Battle.

This means that I have recently finished The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair. We are introduced to Eustace in the Dawn Treader. He is a cousin of the children. When Edmund and Lucy get pulled back into Narnia, Eustace gets pulled in as well. You quickly discover that he is an absolutely beastly boy -- mean, arrogant, selfish. At one point, an enchantment turns him into a dragon.

To become "disenchanted" Aslan tells him to go into a pond. But before he can go in, Aslan tells him that he must undress. Eustace correctly determines that he must shed his skin. He does this, but as soon as he does, another dragon skin appears. Aslan says that he, Aslan, must help him. Though it is very painful Eustace lets Alsan sink his claws in and peel off every inch of the dragon skin.

At the end of the chapter, Lewis writes the following:

It would be nice and fairly true, to say that "from that time forth Eustace was a different boy." To be strictly accurate, he began to be a different boy. He had relapses. There were still many days when he could be very tiresome. But most of those I shall not notice. The cure had begun.

These great words can apply to our lives as Christians. We are beginning to be different as God strips us clean. But like Eustace, we may have relapses and days when we are tiresome. But God knows that is not that end of the story. Hopefully those around us "shall not notice," because they know the cure has begun and we are in the process of becoming.

Having experienced a lack of forgiveness as well as forgiveness, you might have expected me to act with more forgiveness rather than less. Sadly, I didn't. But the hope is in the fact that I recognize it. I plan to call her this week and see if we might have dinner sometime as God suggested to me. Hopefully, God can even use a slow obedience.

Just as Eustace was becoming a different boy. I am becoming a different woman.

The Picture -- Hope Chronicles 22

I don't know how long it had hung there. But it was there during my student days with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and then my 11 year tenure on staff. My guess is, though I haven't been back in years to check, is that it still rests on the wall in the stairwell at InterVarsity's Cedar Campus. Even though it was a simple charcoal sketch, it never failed to catch my eye and my heart.

It was sketched in black on white paper -- a picture of the sea. You could see above the water and below the water. The artist had drawn the bottom of the sea littered with an inner tube and bit of trash and debris. But the heart clincher for me was a simple sign, slightly askew, in the bottom right hand corner. It simply read, "No Fishing."

In that simple picture, the artist caught the condition of the human soul in two ways. First, he noted that our sins have been cast into the sea. Micah 7:19 says, "He will again have compassion on us. And will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all ours sins into the depths of the seas." Notice that God doesn't say that he hurls them into a shallow creek. He casts them into the deepest seas. If we are in Christ, our sins are no more. They have been hurled away by God and buried in the depths.

Secondly, the sign points to our second propensity. Sometimes, we cannot leave well enough alone. Instead, we dig out the fishing gear and sling our poles over our shoulders and head out to the open water. Once there, we fish and fish and fish until we catch something on our hooks. With all the persistence of a seasoned fisherman, we refuse go home empty handed.

Why do we do that? It's not like we really want the rubbish off the bottom of the sea. If anything, it is a burden -- once discarded -- that we pick up again. God cast it there with good reason. He knows that we have been redeemed, that we aren't who we once were. But we go fishing because at some level we doubt that fact. We fear that the sin we confessed isn't really wiped away. We fail to trust the one who freed us from that sin. In doing so, we stifle hope.

I'm not saying that we should never look at our past. Our past informs our present. However, if I just looked at my past with human eyes, my heart would be so heavy I would never manage to struggle out of bed. The sins, the abuse, the pride, . . . would weigh me down so I couldn't move.

Rather, when we look at the past, we need to play close attention to the camera angle. Is it focused on us and our sin or is it focused on the God who redeemed us? Some of the pieces may sound similar in each story, but in reality they are vastly different. One is a picture of despair. The other is a picture of hope.

If you feel the need to look at the past, check the camera angle closely and always let God take center stage. That is where we will find hope in the past, present, and future.

When you find yourself wanting to go fishing, heed this simple sign. It will make all the difference in the world.