The last week of this topic. I have received a lot of feedback and discussion with this topic and I'm delighted! Thanks for reading.
Last Sunday our Pastor became passionate about the message he was sharing. He was so passionate that we went over worship time by about twenty minutes! Anyone who knows a good Methodist knows that going over that hour is tricky....
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1. You have to beat the Baptists to lunch.
2. Wait...no because we let out an hour and a half before them.
3. Your attention span can dissolve like that of a two year old after that 61st minute comes in
4. PLEASE LET ME STAND UP! Sometimes my back or my butt screams that. Just being honest...I blame it on having grown two kids in my lower abdomen.
However, his message was something he was so passionate about that it didn't really matter that he went over the allotted time for sharing it. We were in the zone with him.
So what was it about?
Forgiveness.
That little three syllable word that is so easy to say over and over and again but so incredibly hard to actually do.
It is hard to forgive someone.
No that's an understatement.
It is extremely, immensely, horrendously difficult to truly forgive someone who has hurt you.
I decided today I would share my story of forgiveness. Just be straight up with you guys.
I'm going to try really hard to keep this a blog post and not a novella.
I have shared that I'm the product of a teenage pregnancy. I call myself a 10th grade biology lab experiment. I do that because its funny and I like to be funny. If you can't laugh at tough situations then you may as well pick out your cremation urn because your life is going to suck so bad. (That's just being real....)
Yes, I was born to a mother who turned 17 just two days before my arrival and to a father was who turned 18 the year I was born. If I look back on my own life at 17 and 18 years old I know I was in no mental, physical, or emotional shape to comprehend what it would be really mean to be pregnant let alone to have a new baby to care for. Many people however can tell me all about it. I will tell you I have compassion for those moms and dads who are still wet behind the ears when they give birth to their children.
My heart bleeds for them. In an instant they are stripped of childhood and unknowingly entering the hardest role on this planet...Being a parent.
My childhood was good for the most part. I was close to my mom and lived in fear of my dad. He had a bad temper and could easily be enraged.
To paint the picture: At eight years old I was praying they would divorce. At eight years old I was ready for them to split and hoping that that would mean I never had to see him again.
Naturally, they didn't.
As I grew older the relationship with my parents grew more strained. I disgusted my mother because I viewed her as weak. I detested my father because he was hateful and mean and treated my mom and I like we were the plague.
I took that as being I was the plague because I was the reason for their shotgun marriage. Had there been no conception...I wouldn't exist. Their marriage would have never existed. Maybe they would have found happiness a lot earlier on.
This isn't a story of blaming others, this is a story of blaming my own self too.
That relationship I had watched as a child and been nurtured and natured in would leave an imprint on every relationship I would ever have until years into my own marriage.
Because my view on marriage was so skewed my ideas of love were a big jumbled mess too. The idea of being close to anyone - not in an intimate sense but a general closeness of friendship and camaraderie was damaged.
I didn't want many friends because they would hurt me.
Or I would hurt them.
I didn't want to build relationships with guys because they would be jerks.
Or I would be a jerk to them.
I was damaged and therefore I would do damage to others.
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If there was ever a good portrayal of Nike Running Shoes.. I was it. If things started looking more serious I was sprinting like the Olympic Gold depended on it.
I was also so torn because I wasn't programmed to be docile like my mother and I was fighting the fact that so much of me was so much like my dad. Maybe sometimes even more fierce.
Eventually, I would get married. A scared girl - so scared that I would ruin the sanctity of marriage because I had decided I was not made for it. My messed up view would end up costing thousands of dollars owed to a lawyer.
My marriage was not easy in the first years. It was hard and I kept reverting back to my childhood and growing up in a house that failed to set the example for what love and marriage was.
My intense disdain grew and grew against myself and my parents.
Then he was busted for cheating on my mom.
He lied to me....a few times about it. Bogus, insane, childish lies.
He kept hurting me.
I internalized it as I had hurt him by being born and this was the payback.
The lies though. All the words I had heard him utter out of that mouth.
One thing I can tell you about words is that they don't wash off, they don't fade away, and they cannot be hidden.
They live in your brain and play over and over again at the strangest of times.
I was 27 years old when my parents divorced. The prayer of the 8 year old me came to fruition 19 years after I said the prayer.
And it hurt worst at 27 than I feel like it would have at 8.
Adults aren't resilient as children.
I spent a few years away from my dad. I was finished and I prayed for God to allow him to be dead to me.
God doesn't approve of those types of prayers. It is kind of against His whole mission. You know that whole love and brotherhood thing.
I would make myself believe that I was at peace with this (my) decision.
But I never was.
I had a toddler turned preschooler whose Nana would sneak her visits to her Papaw. Just so he could see her.
Yes, that's the two divorced people.
I had things happening in my life - not so happy things - that made me long for a dad I could talk to.
My ideas to heal the hurt were not working. My ideas were wrong.
They were just as wrong as the house I grew up in.
The crazy thing about God or the Universe or Karma is that one day it plays a big trick on you. A trick that is an opportunity for you to take the high road and do the right thing.
A chance for forgiveness.
Circumstances occurred that would force me to be in my dad's presence with no one else around.
For the first time I wasn't able to slide on the running shoes.
When I walked into my dad's house the first thing he did was say hey and then out of no where tears were flooding out ... from him.
He hugged me like we had been apart for decades.
He apologized for everything he had done.
Then he told me he loved me.
What do you do in that situation?
The only thing that is right and just:
You give the forgiveness that was given to you before you even existed.
That's the point of compassion and humility and grace and love.
It was not easy but I did it. I gave forgiveness and in that moment of accepting an apology and seeing that it was honest and good I felt so many pounds of stress and damage begin to be scrubbed away.
Forgiveness allowed me to move forward with my life. It allowed a bad relationship to heal and become stronger.
If I hadn't accepted that moment I wouldn't have been blessed the way I am today.
The point of forgiveness is not necessarily forgetting the hurt but more taking that hurt and making yourself more humble and aware of other's struggles so you can help and show sympathy and compassion to them.
I also forgave myself later. I forgave myself for the personal hell I struggled through. By telling myself I was culprit for all the mean spirited words and acts, I had hurt myself even deeper. If you think it is hard to forgive another person then own up to your own ways of self inflicted pain and see if you can forgive yourself so easily.
Practice forgiveness, guys. It can be so hard but it can be done.
Its the ultimate form of compassion --- and it was something you were granted before you were ever created.
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