Forgiveness: 7X70 {rambling reflections}

Something brought her face to mind and the same old anger followed as a mask to hide the pain of being painted a different color, the hurt of a love misunderstood, and the sorrow of losing something irreplaceable.

If she really knew me...if she really loved me...if she was--

It happened every time without fail. The memory and then the rekindling of the anger to steal my joy, to sour the day, and that made me even more angry. Why was I letting her have this much power over me?

Each time the anger came, I'd try to smother it, to bury its sharp edges with forgiveness, because what good was the hurt now? If you're hurt or angry, swallow your words. Pretend you have a tougher skin. Don't ever let them know how much power they have. Besides, anger was of no use. I had chosen to keep silent and not direct the hurt towards someone who had wounded my heart so why would I let the memory wound me further?

I'd be walking the dog, cleaning a house, and there it was again, and there was the anger. How come the anger always came so swiftly when I supposedly already forgave and pushed the emotion out the door? Each time, I had to choose to forgive and not to dwell in the bitter resentment, but what did that mean? Had I even forgiven or did I just go through the motions of forgiveness?

She was in the wrong. She was the one who ruined it.

150 days of anger and the pretension of forgiveness?

She was the one who changed, not me. I would never have given up on her. 

Was my forgiveness really just an idea and not reality?

Maybe I don't even know about forgiveness which is funny since there's books and articles on it everywhere you look. There are the 'facts' you hear about over and over again -- forgiveness is healing. Forgiveness sets you free. Forgiveness knits hearts back together. Forgiveness and the asking for forgiveness is what heals relationships and makes them last. Forgiveness and the asking for forgiveness is what Jesus-loving people do and all that really matters with us flaw-filled humans.

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Leave your sacrifice before the altar and go make amends with your brother and then come back. Forgive them for they know not what they do. Don't let the sun go down on your anger. 

Why wasn't it working?

Maybe I don't know about forgiveness because I never really tried to give it, not when it mattered the most, anyway. To be honest, forgiveness is a hard thing to like. Even when I need it, I still struggle to like it because it's not fair (and we have a funny way of picking and choosing what is fair in life), but this time, forgiveness mattered, even if it wouldn't ever be asked for or likely ever knit hearts back together.

I say to you, if your brother sins against you up to 70x7, forgive him. 

70X7. That's a lot of times. Maybe when Jesus told that to Peter, it's because He knew we'd sometimes have to forgive someone for the same thing over and over again in our hearts. Every single time we thought of the person or the circumstance. It doesn't mean there is something wrong with our forgiveness or that we're not doing it right. It's just that we're humans, and we're forgetful, and we hold tight to things that hurt us, but God knows our frames. He knows how we stumble over ourselves.

Forgiving is easier mentally than emotionally, and so we work on our minds and our thoughts. We work on them day after day after day until our heart finally catches up, and our emotions right themselves -- a lot easier said than done. After six months, I realized there was no longer any anger, and a month later something happened, and I was angry all over again.  We're all a work in progress, and that's alright.

"Feelings are meant to be fully felt and then fully surrendered to God. The word emotion comes from the Latin for 'movement' -- and all feelings are meant to move you toward God." - Ann Voskamp

Emotions fully felt, not judged by us, and given to God.

You Don't Have To Fix Me

Could we sit here for awhile?

Could we sit here in this silence?

You don't have to say a word.

Please don't say a word.

Just sit here next to me

Till this numbness starts to thaw.

You don't even have to fix me

Or put my broken pieces back together.

Just remind me 

That one day I will be able

To hold a completely perfect circle

Instead of this 

-This shattered broken thing. 

Could we sit here for awhile?

Could we sit here in this silence?

Please don't say you see my broken,

Just my broken and nothing else,

Nothing like potential or possibility.

Can you stand to see my broken

And hear it slip right off my tongue?

Can you watch me slide

Down some slope or dig my own pit 

-My own grave?

You don't have to answer.

I know it by the way you sit with me.

My broken isn't some wall

You have to will yourself right over.

My broken is like your broken.

My cracks are as invisible as yours

Until they begin to show.

This ache is one we both share,

And that is why we sit in our silences.

We sit next to each other

And our ugly brokenness,

And we overlook the flaws,

The broken fences,

The shattered windows of our souls

Because we know we only mirror. 

It's Okay to Ask for Help

I don't like asking for help. At all. I'll go high and low to avoid it, even if the help would give me peace of mind or save me from hours of extra work or worry that could have been avoided.

Nope. I'm absolutely, most assuredly not going to ask. Besides, I know exactly what they're going to say. They're going to say something I don't like, and it's not just that. They'll probably say something that shows how little they know me. And it's just too tiring to tell them all the reasons they're wrong, and wait, you're not supposed to swat down brainstorming ideas so you just have to politely listen, all the while boiling up inside, because they assume a lot and you don't actually need this help anymore and the whole thing was a failure...and...and...

And sometimes I just feel like it's way too much work to ask for advice.

But you know what?

It's not this whole exhausting thing. At least it doesn't have to be as long as we don't toss our pearls to swine. It's easy to let these negative interactions leave a nasty taste in our mouths. To keep us from experiencing the good parts. In our minds, we reason away the work of admitting our vulnerability because we're all flawed humans and no one has it more together than any other and anyway we know everything ourselves. But sometimes we have scraped the bottom. We are not enough, and we are being suffocated by that very 'not enoughness'. There's absolutely nowhere to go, and we've put great big walls all around us, and we are isolate because we're supposed to be able to do this on our own, but you know what?

It's still okay to ask for help. It's never too late to ask for help.

Yes, we're all flawed humans, and we don't have everything together, and some of the most respected individuals have revealed over time their sin stains to us. But being helped up by someone who stands a little taller than you, whose feet are on a more solid rock, whose love speaks loudly, is how it's meant to be. God wants us to always be growing. To be lifting our younger brothers and sisters all the while being lifted ourselves. None of us will ever fully arrive.

If you need help, ask for it because...

1. We all get worn out and tired and discouraged.

And we lose our ability to see our problems clearly. We can't get far enough away to view the big picture. We're stuck in the valley, and sometimes it's good to have a watchman up on the top telling us what is waiting on the other side or which place is easier to climb because they've already done it.

2. Nobody knows everything, even if we mostly think we do.

There's always room for learning, and every single person you meet knows something you don't. I got this pride thing. It's really hard. I'd rather exhaust every ounce of me before showing I don't have it altogether. I don't want to be viewed as stupid because I should know this and this, even though I don't. I don't want to be viewed as lazy because I could have figured this out if I'd only give it time and energy. I don't want to be a bother. Yet, on the other hand, if someone thought I could help them, I would. Without hesitation, I would give their problem, their worries, all of my attention. I'd even wonder, "Why are they asking me? Why do they think I could have this wisdom?" I am humbled by someone asking me for help. 

3. I think it's something God wants. 

There aren't a whole lot of verses exactly on the idea of having mentors or counselors, but there is a lot about us sharpening each other, encouraging each other, mourning with one another, financially helping one another. Because of the way things are structured, I believe God had that kind of thing in mind. He made families. Fathers and mothers to guide us in the way we should go, but sometimes they just can't help or are not around. He placed church elders and pastors for guiders. Sometimes even paid counselors. God can use anyone to bless us, anyone to lift us up, dust us off, and send us on our way.


Is it hard for you to ask for help or is it just me? What has been your most helpful advice? Least helpful? How do you feel about giving advice? 

My Loss of Words

-Tuesday-

Doctor's Office. Whispers in the hallway. For privacy, I know, and I try not to listen, but they're talking about her. I just know it. Emergency Room. This all should be familiar, and it is, but it isn't. I sit in the corner, out of the way, and I need to fight, but I can't. I can't fix anything with my feeble human love and a needle and thread.

-Wednesday-

Hospital after work till dark. Pneumonia, but it isn't cold. Pneumonia comes with the cold weather and sickness that won't go. I stumble through the dark at home. Finish chores by 10:30. I write.

-Thursday-

Doctor's Office with someone else. Trying to fill holes, carry the weight of her worries, but I can't fill all her spaces, not hers and mine. Work. She sends me a text, 'Pray.' Hospital. Her chest trembles with each fight for oxygen. Breathing shouldn't be so hard. She is sick. Not sick like all the other hospital stays. Sick. We pray. Sister cries. I don't. Not till I'm home and alone and stumbling through the dark. Do I trust God with the lives of those I love?

I don't. 

-Friday-

She says she is scared. I want to know the deepest parts of another human, but I don't want to know that. Don't tell me. My heart cries, and I work because I can't be there. And I pray. A procedure. A test. A new room in the CCU - Critical Care Unit. My heart stops as I read the sign. And I wait outside the doors. She is drowsy. Her face half-covered with a breathing machine. In and out. In and out. Filling her lungs with the freshest air she has breathed for a month and a half of smoke. She can't talk, but there's color in her face. She is better, yet worse? 

-Saturday-

Fever breaks. It isn't a fight to breath on her own. Out of CCU to somewhere else. I sneak her cut-up melon fresh from my garden and roast and vegetables I cook. She eats more than she has since last Saturday. And she smiles. And she almost laughs. 

-Sunday-

All afternoon we watch her drowse in and out of sleep. She is better but worn. They don't know when she'll get to go home. Home. She wants to go there. She apologizes for all of this, but why? I want to cry, but she does, and I try to pick up the pieces of my saddened heart and put together a smile. It will be alright, but I don't know when or how. She asks, 'Why?' I just don't know. She drags herself along, bruised and broken and worn, and her body fights, but it's tired. And I'm tired as I try to fill all the spaces, her spaces, with me. I can't fix anything with my feeble human love. 

This life is a messy life, and I think I've lost my words. 

P.S. My blog's 1st anniversary is this week. I was going to do a giveaway but life. 

The Top 3 Influencers of My Writing

1.  Like many writers, I'm sure, my love of stories began with C.S. Lewis and his Chronicles of Narnia. But I don't know if I fully realized the extent of power stories held until I watched The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe in the theaters when I was 10. That movie came out at the perfect time in my life. I don't know if it would have enchanted me the same at any other age, but the enchantment of that first time watching it has lasted throughout the years, and still as I watch it, I might as well be 10 years-old.
How could a story hold so much power? It awed me, and I guess that's the same thing I want to do in my writing. To create awe and hope and courage and a yearning because those are the things I've felt from stories.  I guess it's revenge, in a way. I have this yearning that has been awakened by stories, and others must be captured and tortured by it, too.

2.  From the age of 4 until 15 (okay, if we're being honest, we haven't stopped), my brother and I would spend our days creating stories and enacting them. It was through this that I realized I could be a storyteller. It wasn't some magic thing only certain people could do. Storytelling was everywhere and could be done by anyone and in any format. With my brother, I learned more about stories than I could have by reading any book. I learned about creating story worlds, different characters, compelling plots (if I wasn't on top of my game, my brother would get bored quickly, and then all the characters would be suddenly dead), conflicts in stories (our arguments would spill in and out of our stories). Even now, seeds that were planted then come up. Beloved characters have morphed into some totally different role in stories. C. S. Lewis might have influenced my writing a lot. He might have showed me the power of stories, but acting out stories from sun up to sun down with my brother? Those moments showed me how entertaining stories were. How enjoyable it was to create them. And all those memories come with my brother and best friend; so he's up there by C.S. Lewis as an influencer of my writing.

3. It was 2010, no, early 2009. I had a blog called 'Where the Sun Shines' back then with a handful of followers. One of them was a girl named Liz. She was a couple years older than me and an Indie writer (I think she's published two books by now). Out of all the blogs I followed at the time, hers was my favorite. She shared clips of her writing and photos and life in general. But I guess it was the way she answered and even had conversations in her blog's comment section (which is still my highlight of blogging. I never did like how it was more of a one-sided social media outlet) that made her my favorite blogger.
I did write enough then to consider writing as one of the things I enjoyed doing, but I didn't really pursue it whole-heartedly. Through posts on her blog and conversations, she inspired me to actually finish one of my stories. Not only that, she offered to read some of what I'd written, even though I had nothing to give her in return. She read page after page of my different stories and sent back long e-mails.
Let's face it. My writing stunk. Sure, it wasn't as terrible as my early stuff, but it certainly didn't shine. She could have ripped it apart easily. She could have gotten stuck on the grammar or my spelling or how much I told instead of showed, but she didn't. She overlooked my smudges and saw my heart and my potential as a story teller. Sometimes I wonder why she even bothered as I look back at all I've learned and realize everything I didn't know then.
Some writers have sad stories about how different people who've read their writing first ripped it apart. Those writers are so courageous to keep going in spite of everything. I don't know if I'd ever have gotten this far if not for the seeds of hope she planted in my heart.
Over the years her blog disappeared. She just disappeared. I found her on Facebook once, but somewhere along the way, our paths went in totally different directions, but still I imagine hers will be one of the names in the acknowledgements if I should ever publish a book. Those e-mails she sent are still in the dark, dusty basement of my inbox. I sometimes pull them back out and reread them, and I'm once more encouraged. They are more a reflection of her character than my writing, and they remind me of the power of words and being in a place of influence. And they remind me that sometimes compassion trumps truth. Sometimes you need to be reminded how much you're getting right rather than everything you've still got wrong.



Who has influenced your writing the most?