Seeking Forgiveness

I have been absent from the blog for a bit, as a huge project looms. But I always work better under pressure and I needed to take a break and share some things with you.

I’ve been wrestling lately with my own fallibility. Not in the areas where I know I am weak and prone to error—like bookkeeping; but making mistakes in the things II think on an average day I do really well—like caring for others and building friendships that last. I found out Monday that I deeply, deeply hurt someone about five years ago. I had no idea I had injured this friend so significantly  that he would rather withdraw from us completely rather than expose himself to my superiority and judgment (yes…moi…the queen of “it’s not your place to judge; it is your place to love”!).

At the same time as the news of my callous treatment of a heart reached me, so did an email exchange with my four older sisters in which they recalled a song my mother used to sing with them at bedtime. (I was just a twinkle of a star hanging over the moment, as I am 11 years younger.) The lyrics of the song were previously unknown to me, but they are timeless and beautifully introspective. It’s called An Evening Prayer, by Charles H. Gabriel.

If I have wounded any soul today,
If I have caused one foot to go astray,
If I have walked in my own willful way,
Dear Lord, forgive.

If I have uttered idle words or vain,
If I have turned aside from want or pain,
Lest I offend some other through the strain,
Dear Lord, forgive.

If I have been perverse, or hard, or cold,
If I have longed for shelter in the fold,
When thou hast given me some fort to hold,
Dear Lord, forgive.

Forgive the sins I have confessed to thee,
Forgive the secret sins I do not see;
O guide me, love me, and my keeper be.
Dear Lord, Amen.

So often the hurts we cause aren’t of malicious intent or manipulative design. The greatest hurt comes from the least thought. The harm we do without awareness or with complete self absorption.

In my faith journey, the forgiveness Charles Gabriel seeks in his poem is the easiest to obtain. The unconditional love and grace that is offered me comes from a God who is glad to know that I finally see how wrong I am and is ready to gently hug me and put me back on my feet to walk in Grace and try again.

Human forgiveness isn’t as easy to come by.

I received a note once from a woman who had started an incredibly damaging rumor about me that she knew wasn’t true. We went to the same church and saw each other frequently in the community. It certainly hurt that she had thought terrible things about me, but I knew it wasn’t true; my husband knew it wasn’t true (the rumor was that I was having an affair with one of my clients, who happened to be her husband) and I knew I hadn’t behaved in any way that could have allowed misinterpretation of my actions. So somehow, with wisdom beyond my years, I went on and just ignored the local rumor mill until it subsided. But I didn’t ignore her. I kept loving her, even though I didn’t like what she’d done. I just acted like it hadn’t happened, because nothing really had happened in the first place.

The note she wrote me many years later is one I kept. It reminds me not how special I was (because I’m not…in this example, I I let grace flow…other times, I construct might grace dams!), but how brave she was. It takes a sincere and open heart to tell someone you were wrong and to ask them to forgive you. And often times, if we think we were right and the other person wrong, we don’t even consider apologizing for any harm that might have come to another heart amidst our march to self righteousness.

It breaks my heart to see people extend olive branches only to have their hands slapped away. Or when the one who is being asked for forgiveness offers a token acceptance laced with the sense that their acceptance is magnanimous and worth more than the humble solicitation for grace. I think immediately of middle school girls who come up with all sorts of barriers to forgiveness in order to put another in her place or to maintain the center of attention the conflict might offer. Victims get so much care and concern, after all. The problem is, some of us never grow beyond that adolescent need to build ourselves up on the litany of all the suffering we’ve endured. If we forgive and forget, then what do we have to show for ourselves?

Well…an open heart and light spirit, for one thing. But it’s easy for me to say, as not much harm has ever really come to me and forgiving is easy. Forgetting…not so much so. But the nature of my memories can be much healthier if I disassociate them with hurt or bruised feelings.

So, I hope, having fired off my sincere apology to my friend I hurt, that my words work well enough to start over with that relationship. It takes awhile to rebuild trust and he will have to give me a decade or two to prove that I love him just the way he is. Because that’s the time it took to knit the rug I pulled out from under him with one careless and ill conceived action.

Today. Seek forgiveness. Forgive yourself and love yourself just as you are—because God loves you as you are—and God is the only one who sees our true potential and thus knows just how far we fall short of the mark every single day.  Then, work on really forgiving someone else. Injury and our sense of personal injustice take up very valuable room in our spirits. And we’re wrong to let it consume us…even when we think we’re right. There is no purpose in it. It is what it is and you don’t know what it was because you aren’t God. Sorry. Somebody had to say it. And I always say it to me first. (It helps when one is dispensing words of wisdom that she remembers she is just a channel, and an oft broken one at that!)

Forgiveness is the way we cultivate the soil in which goodness grows. So get busy seeking and dispensing forgiveness friends. It’s a beautiful day for it!

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