carrying emotional baggage is cheap
it’s amazing how emotional stress can affect my writing. i’ve really been struggling with the issue of forgiveness lately. i’ve been keeping a personal journal but can’t seem to find the motivation to blog, which used to be my favorite thing. someone i know recently developed some serious health problems. she had been a mentor to me, who claimed to want to help me with a number of trust issues i had accumulated over the years. ironically, she ended up being a lying manipulator just like all the rest.
tim keller says, “What is forgiveness? When someone has wronged you, it means they owe you; they have a debt with you. Forgiveness is to absorb the cost of the debt yourself. You pay the price yourself, and you refuse to exact the price out of the person in any way. Forgiveness means you free the person from penalty for a sin by paying the price yourself. Forgiveness is a promise to not ‘bring the matter up’ to the person, others, or even ourselves. At each point when we are tempted to exact payment, we refuse, and though it hurts, that is a payment.”
it’s hard to realize that when people hurt you, whether they will ever take responsibility or not, whether there will ever be an reconciliation or not, they can never give you back the time, energy, identity, dignity and respect that they took from you. it’s gone. so many people i genuinely thought i’d forgiven have flooded my mind like a tidal wave, which means they were merely swept under the rug, not forgiven. true forgiveness is not warm and fuzzy- it’s excruciating, like a slow asphyxiation. my pride, my anger and my bitterness all have to die.
i have stumbled upon anne lamott’s blue shoe. (i secretly wish to have lunch with her, annie dillard and joan didion- the trifecta of vulnerable, strong women authors). the main character, mattie, is recently divorced and has moved back into her childhood home, where she and her brother al grew up. Since her mother, isa, has moved to a retirement community Mattie and her kids have taken up residence in the old house. it brings back bittersweet memories, which are further saddened once her best friend angela moves away. one particular paragraph floored me.
“…She thanked God several times a day for what she had and trusted him for what she needed. She thanked Him for 2 healthy children, for her church, for a house with a yard. She thanked God for helping her finally get out of her marriage and for helping her more or less survive the pain of Angela’s leaving. She even thanked God for giving her such a difficult mother, because she believed that while it had been nearly life-threatening to survive Isa’s mothering, the price she and Al paid was exactly what if cost to become who they were…”
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