Scars
Sometimes I imagine God shaking His spiritual head in Heaven watching me - - watching all of us - - as we totally miss the lessons He is trying to teach us, even when it couldn’t be more obvious what He is trying to show us. Every once in a while it bumps against my awareness in a way where I almost have to laugh out loud and say, “Okay, I get it, God.”
Today is one of those days. God is watching me in my rubber boots walking about getting trapped in the thick and grippy mud in all my old resentments. I think of one of my favorite book characters - Ramona Quimby - and I can picture the scene almost as if I were there with Ramona when she was in kindergarten.
Her beautiful red boots that she had waited to have for so long get submerged into the mud, and she is stuck, unwilling to climb out of those boots and surrender them; therefore, she is unable to move forward. She is there until Henry Huggins comes and lifts her out of her boots. She is NOT happy about this; look at the illustration here that demonstrates this:
Illustration by Louis Darling from Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary.
I am stuck today: stuck in my resentments. Stuck in the inability to forgive things that have happened to me that keep rearing their ugly head. Just this morning two people that have wounded me have entered into my consciousness, and I have been trying to figure out why God is so obviously pointing me toward thoughts related to these people today.
This morning I received a text from my place of employment about a new hire, and the new hire happens to be someone who a long, long time ago was once a close friend and then became a boyfriend, and then things went downhill a few months into that relationship. I ended that relationship, but I have never been able to truly forgive the situation that took place that scarred me. And now I find out I will have to have even more interactions with this person, as uncomfortable as he makes me. I may have to even (shudder!!) be nice to this person.
As I write this, I am in one of my happy places at the moment (a library). After I sent something to the printer, I got up to go release it to print, and then I saw another person who hurt me sitting next to the printer. This person had wounded me with an accusation hurled thoughtlessly that insulted and attacked my character. The part of me that knows she probably doesn’t even remember it and I should just go pick up my print jobs was overshadowed by the hurt that I felt inside me as I contemplated going over there. There is a part of me that has become stronger over the years of my life that is deeply protective of my heart - a heart with many scars, I’m realizing - and I find myself avoiding situations where there is potential for hurt or something going in the wrong direction.
And yet I will admit that I can hear God calling to me to let these things go.
As I sat down to work in this quiet space, I glanced at my Google Doc of reminders of what had struck me in this chapter, and I stare at these notes on my page with the cursor flashing next to them.
Anne Lamott - “Earth is Forgiveness School.” (p. 85)
Giving up our right to recompense, to resentment, to self-righteousness (p. 86)
I had not yet thought about how I would present these ideas to my readers or how I would flesh out these words I underlined in my book. But they resonate.
Let me trace the path of my thoughts a bit further today. School has always been something that has brought me success. I am one of those good students who follows directions, shows up on time, goes above and beyond… I memorize well, I know how to study, I highlight and engage with the text… I am a good test taker, and I love to write. I received excellent grades, and my GPA was high. But the real world application has always come hard for me; for example, I have literally never had a conversation in Spanish with someone other than in a school setting, in spite of two years in high school and a year in college. I signed up for DuoLingo recently, and I am still pretty decent at Spanish - I remember the vocabulary and the rules about articles, and I can follow along a conversation pretty well. But it’s gone virtually unused all these years since I graduated from college because the Real World is a different place than a classroom.
I think Anne Lamott hit on a piece of wisdom too in her brief statement - this is trade school: where the rubber hits the road. I am supposed to take the things I know in my head and practice them in the Real World. I am supposed to take Jesus’ command to forgive seriously and put it into action.
This morning has bonked me in the head with the realization that I am failing Forgiveness School.
As far as the other statement: Giving up our right to recompense, to resentment, to self-righteousness… well, let’s just say that I am not earning any gold stars there either. When confronted with our own humanity and our own selfishness, it’s not hard to feel the weight of our sin, particularly on this week of Good Friday’s impending approach.
Matthew 6: 14-15 reminds us of this overwhelming truth: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
Sometimes we encounter things in our lives that the Bible doesn’t directly confront, and we are left to prayerfully seek a broader answer that relates to our current circumstance. But people hurting other people has been around since the very beginning of our existence as a species; God’s desire to have us release those grievances is preached and commanded in the Bible repeatedly. Unequivocally.
The website that I was perusing (biblestudytools.com) shares this prayer: "Father, please forgive me when I allow anger and bitterness to fill my heart because I refuse to forgive someone who has hurt me. Teach me how to lay down my rights and choose to forgive in the same way You have forgiven me." (Mary Southerland) This blog is practically writing itself; I’m just following along the path God meant me to trod on today.
Although I am stubbornly still wedged into my rainboots of resentment and mistrust at this moment with these two mud puddles of joy-sucking scenarios in my heart, not really wanting Jesus to pull me out into a different and better place, I will celebrate that I have made at least one step in a better direction with someone else who has not tread softly upon my heart in years past. This person recently invited me to a birthday celebration, and although I wasn’t able to go, I did find a gift for her and write a card for her, and I delivered them the next time I saw her at church. She wrote me a thank you card, and I felt the healing balm of a relationship being less painful than it had been. I took one fumbling tiny step toward making an effort, and God rewarded and blessed that, and I know that He can do the same with these other war-ravaged parts of my soul that are painful to touch.
