I come from a family with elephant-like memories that hold long hard grudges and never forget when they do you a favor. Fortunately, I seem to have escaped this family curse. In fact, I spent years — too many years — in friendships and romantic relationships that were hurtful and damaging. I forgave them, loved them, and took them back into the fold. I was generous to a fault. I gave before others asked, occasionally anonymously providing for friends in need who had wronged me. My high-road emotional life often left me feeling used but content that my heart was clear of malice. Oh how easily we deceive ourselves.
In 2004, a life-long girlfriend threw a fatal blow across my bow while I was in the midst of a great personal storm. I had forgiven her many transgressions, but this was the proverbial straw. Like a paddle pulled from my hands during a raging storm, the current swept her effortlessly into an open sea far from sight. After four decades of friendship, I simply let her go.
Occasionally she flitted through my thoughts, tight and terse. I recalled all the offenses of our childhood: The elementary school years when she teased me until I cried, the middle school years when she de-friended me because my nose was too large for my face, the high school years when she lied about me to others. I thought of her biting tongue and the ease with which she robbed me of my memory of her brother’s and my affection for each other. I told myself I should have ended the friendship earlier, when we were children. Good-bye and good-riddance.
In retrospect, I saw that ours had not always been a healthy relationship. I had grown up in an emotionally toxic family, I simply didn’t know any better. I told myself I had remained friends with her because her parents gave me shelter from the noxious environment of my home life. There was some truth in that; but she was fun, and I, a girl whose family thought fun was a four-letter word, every so often would forget myself when I was with her and laugh — the burdens of my alcoholic household instantly lightened. Periodically, my mind would drift to the early years of her parents’ illness, how her fears overtook her and she would call me frightened in the middle of the night, unable to sleep. Still in my pajamas, I would walk to the top of the hill on our street and meet her. Silently we would make our way to the safety of my bedroom where she would snuggle under the covers and find sleep at last. As teenagers, the two of us took to skipping classes and doing outlandishly silly things, neither of which my parents would have approved. Reflecting on our life together as adults, I recalled an act of great kindness she had extended me. For that one incident, I am still in her debt.
Years passed, and the hurt of her last offense burrowed deep. Anger is a less painful emotion than hurt. It summons roaring lions to the gates to ward off any additional threats, real or imagined. So I let my resentment simmer. In 2007 God began dealing with me about forgiving her. I didn’t want to hear it. I justified my stubborn silence and turned a deaf ear. Sometimes I would remind Him of all her offenses, her sins compared to mine. I wasn’t arguing absolute right and wrong — as my life was riddled with missteps and bad decisions — I was arguing comparison. Saul and David were my examples. When David wrote in the Psalms about his goodness counter to Saul’s sin, it was never about absolutes. David knew what each of us knows, we are all flawed.
For two years I heard God’s voice whisper in my ear. I would not listen. The weekly dreams began in which she was always present. I planted my feet and continued arguing my case. In great God fashion, He did not give up on me. A new lesson emerged: Obedience, that season of nonsensical surrender.
I heard His voice speak gently, “Write her.”
“What on earth would I say?” I asked indignantly.
“Write her.”
The instruction was clear. I put it off for another year. And then one day I pulled out a note-sized piece of paper. My pen hovered over the page. My head wanted to do the right thing, but my feelings just wouldn’t follow. I prayed. What could I possibly say? That gentle voice said, “Just invite her for coffee.” I cringed at the thought of sitting across the table from her. I could see her face, radiant and beaming, rattling on about her new marriage to a wealthy man while I lamented over the life-and-death issues I had been wrestling with regarding my son. I could hear her patronizing lecture, her superior position from her place of economic and domestic bliss. Her life was so fabulous, my life was in ruin. I silenced my imagination and took a step toward obedience, fully resentful.
The sealed note sat on my desk for a week, its tiny form a flashing beacon of unfulfilled compliance. Finally I drove to the post office. I wasn’t happy. I squirmed in the seat as I lowered my car window in front of the postal box. Extending my arm toward the slot, I paused, watching the small innocent-looking envelope hover half-in half-out of the mail slot. “As an act of obedience,” I said, as if God didn’t know my thoughts. Releasing it with a tiny shove, I heard the envelope tumble against the metal and hit the pile of letters inside. “Now, if there’s anyone else I need to forgive, please show me.” I meant it only halfheartedly. I was not a grudge holder. At best there might be a couple of people I was mildly annoyed with, a few small things I hadn’t let go of. I drove away feeling content that I had done my part and God was pleased. I mentally dusted off my hands and drove on into my day.
I have always found that if we ask God to show us our brokenness, he will — it is a slightly irritating trait. Wouldn’t you agree? Sometimes we casually say, “Well, Lord, if I’m doing anything wrong, please show me.” We don’t always mean it. We say it in a way that is half I’m willing and half I’m sure I don’t really need any correcting. Then He goes and answers our request…go figure…a God who answers prayer. We want Him to answer all the ones related to other people, to our finances, our car, our house, our job, our in-laws. But we don’t really want to feel the sting of correction. Personally, I am horrible at correcting people. I always seem to offend despite my best intentions.
Fortunately, the Lord is full of salt and light. He lovingly reveals to us our bad behaviors and attitudes in such a manner that they are suddenly glaringly apparent; we wonder how we could not have seen them before. In fact, God often does this in such a way that they’re not only hard to miss, but funny. And that is exactly what he did starting the morning I dropped my tiny little piece of obedience in the mailbox.
I ran into one of my regular coffee spots for a latte. There in the corner of the room sat a guy I hadn’t seen in years, a guy I briefly dated before catching him in a big fat lie. I had axed him out of my life via voice mail some fifteen years prior. I chuckled. Oh yeah, I thought, I totally forgot about him. And that was how it started. For the next few months I couldn’t go anywhere — not a grocery store, a drug store, a restaurant — that one of my mental prisoners didn’t magically appear in my line of sight. While sitting at red lights in my car, they would mysteriously appear on street corners. They crossed in front of me in parking lots. They were in movie theaters, two rows in front of me or just down the aisle. They were everywhere. There were dozens of them, long vanquished into the prison of my heart. People I had totally forgotten, offenses that couldn’t be recalled, names that had escaped my memory, but everyone a person I had ousted from my life due to some transgression.
At first I thought God extremely funny and clever, answering my prayer in such a tangible way. But after a while I began to see that my pharisaical way of judging my family for their grudge holding was, well, just that — pharisaical. All these years I had imagined myself to be above grudge holding. I had seen myself beyond the family curse. I had envisioned my little unforgiveness jail to be like the cell in Andy of Mayberry’s office. It held a couple of people. I’d sit on the other side of the bars with my feet up on the desk chatting away with them. At lunch I’d run down to the corner diner and get them a cheeseburger. No one stayed there long. It was more like a holding tank until the storm passed. What I discovered was something far more menacing. My little Andy-of-Mayberry jail was really Guantanamo Bay. What shocked me most was my self-deception. What grieved me was the cost of my unforgiving heart.
It is hard to be at peace when there is so much unforgiveness lodged in a soul. We are frustrated, we are vexed, we are easily agitated. We are yoked with the offender in our refusal to release them from their wrongdoing. We are right. We are justified. We are deserving of our anger. We hold it tightly and, in so doing, choke our own lives. We are bound in a spirit of pride, which is the heart of every sin under the sun. As you forgive, so you will be forgiven.
For many months, my hostages trickled in. They looked worn and tattered from their stint in the dark recesses of my unforgiveness prison. As I saw their faces, I released them. I asked God each time to forgive me for being so cruel, so self-righteous. I learned the difference between forgiveness and restoration. One bears the mark of release, the other embrace. I renounced my sin of judgment against my family. I recalled many of my offenses they had forgiven. I thought of all the years my mother had loved me despite my selfishness, arrogance and rebellion. After more than a year, the prisoners, the memories of their offenses, stopped coming. I felt clean. I felt free.
And then one day, while climbing the stairs in my house, I heard God whisper, “There is still one left.” “Who?” I asked, genuinely surprised. “Yourself,” He replied. I sat down on the edge of the stair. I contemplated this truth. I turned it over and over, wondering if I could at last forgive myself for the mistakes of my youth, for the things I had done that echoed into the lives of so many and caused so much pain. I didn’t think I deserved to be set free, but that had been God’s point all along. None of us deserve it. Jesus bought forgiveness for us. It’s a gift, not a right. The ocean of God’s forgiveness has carried our sins into a sea of forgetfulness because of His grace. By denying others the gift of forgiveness, we deny ourselves. We live in a prison, wrapped in self-righteous pride. For those of us who have had much forgiven, much is required. Let us give freely what has been given so freely to us. It is the path of life…to all who take it.