"What should I write about?", I asked my friends. Forgiveness, came the answer. I don't want to write about forgiveness. Even the word feels trite and "religious" in my mouth. Nothing new under the sun has been written about it. Most of it makes me stop listening. It's all just so much babble and none of it sits on me like that light yoke the Giver promises me. And sometimes I've found myself having to forgive the Forgiver of all. What's that about? I feel irritable and restless. I can't stop thinking about chocolate covered cashews. I don't know what to say.
In January, I got on Facebook with a cute status update. "What's everyone's word for the new year going to be?", I asked. I got every response from "coffee" (you know who you are!) to "adventure". My word came to me like a package at my door. "Impossible". It delivered itself into my heart and I sat mulling it over the way you do when you think something is going to jump out at you. That sounded dangerous. It threatened to not give me what I wanted. Worse, it promised to give me what I least expected. Most alarmingly, it sounded a lot like losing control. I sat in my kitchen that cold, snowy night with only the light of my year round Christmas lights and my computer screen. This felt like a dare, and not a "fair" one at all; sort of a cosmic Let's Make a Deal. I faltered there on my squeaky wooden chair as I made my decision.
The choice I made that night was to let my walls of self protection fall. Much like the proverbial tree in the forest, when your walls fall, no sound is made whether anyone's there to hear it or not. You feel it, is the thing. Impossible rushed in and wreaked havoc on my insides. I started crying harder, questioning bigger, and aching deeper. This did not feel good. Surely, I'd picked the wrong curtain. What's worse, the less I protected myself, the more there was to protect from. It's right dangerous outside my walls, I yelled out to no one but me.
That's when it happened. The Giver showed up, all Knight in Shining Armor. "Get out of the way. You're standing between Me and you," He told me. I laid myself down that day as flat as I could and looked up at forgiveness. He covered me up and buried me in it. Everything that gave me life stopped and I quit breathing it in. I let go and died. Thankfully, I've never recovered.
I'm 56 years old. On July 15th, I will get another year older, having done so one day at a time. My eyesight has changed, my heart beats stranger to me. It's not because of my age, though. My "death" caused me to walk inside of the Giver and I look out through His eyes, feel with His heart. Some days are rough and I struggle to not give out freely the forgiveness I survive on. When I reach out to grab hold of something to trust other than Him, it turns to snakes and I throw it back down..
There it is. My best shot. I live now with my feet firmly on the ground and my eyes looking upward. I love this life even on my hardest days. I have questions that no answers make sense of. Some days I am lonely. Some days I am flying high. It hurts me when someone doesn't like me. And I don't understand why I can't have what I want. At night whatever bothered me in the day can seem like a monster under my bed. Most days I'm quick to forgive all of it. I've learned to "forgive" Him for not letting me rule the world and that was the greatest gift of all. Because I realize now that my lack of trust in Him was the key to forgiving.
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