I’ve started thinking again. Being sick will do that to you. Being sick for three weeks will especially do that to you. Finally you get sick of the TV, you can’t read because your head hurts too much and writing is something you have to save your energy for research papers and political philosophy essays. After a while, you just sit and look at the ceiling, or maybe get enough gumption off the couch to do the dishes that have stacked in your kitchen sick from being to tired to take care of.
As I did all of these things, I kept wondering back to some of the hard things I have encountered and about being 25 and feeling 40 and about wondering if I would ever get better at being a person and what a shame it would be if I didn’t.
My boyfriend has that amazing ability that I have mentioned before, to say the most profound things in the simplest of ways. Sort of the way Proverbs makes a whole lot of sense, but really hard to implement.
I had been talking to him, lamenting over a broken heart. I cried and told him how much I didn’t understand and asked the inevitable why question. As if no one in the world had never felt what I was feeling and I was the first to ever land on a new beach of pain and injustice. I could hear myself sounding ridiculous, but I am never one to stop and bring logic to the table of emotion, so I just talked and cried and told him he would never understand. I laugh now, but it wasn’t funny in the moment.
I asked him how he could be so okay with people that had hurt him. Now that I think about it, I didn’t really ask him, I sort of threw it at him like an accusation. As if he was somehow the defective one and I was normal for being bitter and angry. He said the same thing he always says, “People are people. They are who they are and I have learned to accept them for what they are. You can’t sweat the small stuff.”
I sort of wanted to throw something at him from 3,000 miles away. I am glad sometimes he can’t see the look on my face at times. I am a little afraid he would see a side of me that I don’t even like. I am sure at that moment I had the classic ‘I just sucked on a lemon’ face. My selfish nature could not easily comprehend the simple truth to what he was saying, or see the wisdom in it. Instead, I just stopped crying and changed the subject. Funny how easily the tears can turn off and on at times, especially when you are suddenly realize there is an answer to the question you didn’t want an answer for.
Later, I was washing dishes, thinking over what he had said and what I had said and what I wanted to be different. I kept thinking how unfair it was that I would always try to seek reconciliation, or how I would apologize to people and they never would back. I was feeling fairly self-righteous in my own desire to become a better person, and thus seek out others to make right the times I had failed. Irony and self-defeat dully noted. It’s no good to ask for forgiveness for the purpose of trying to garner a return sentiment.
I circled the airport of self-pity and had just about pulled up to the gate when I was stopped in my tracks. As He usually does, Jesus moved into the small space I had created (even in and around my narcissism of the moment) and asked me if it would be good enough if He asked for forgiveness on the behalf of those that had done me wrong. He repeated what He said on the cross and simply asked for forgiveness on their behalf. They were unaware of the damage they had done and I wasn’t going to be any happier if they came and told me they were sorry and knew what they had done. It wouldn’t make the pain go away, and it wouldn’t make me want to forgive them anymore, but He knew that and asked for them.
Everything fell into place. Humbled to the enth degree, I realized His cross had been for me, for my ex husband, for my ex best friends, for the people that would do me wrong in the future, for the wrong I would do in the future.
No matter how many times I can come to a realization of the wrong I have done and ask for forgiveness, it will never be complete. There will always be more, something I missed, but the amazing thing? Where I can’t complete, where I fail, where I come up short, His purpose is to step in and complete. He can heal what I didn’t know I wounded out of the selfishness that is me.
The same can go for others as well. Incredibly humbling, but I think just as necessarily, He steps up and takes the place of those that have failed to reconcile what needs to be reconciled and asks on their behalf. He can, more heartfelt than anyone in the universe, begin to undo the damage of imperfection. He is aware of the failings I commit and others have committed against me and He is so grieved over both. He brings freedom through bridging the gap, not only between the Father and me, but Him and me and then others and me as well. His heart says “Love freely, love wholly, love completely and when they fail, when it is crushed, when you fail, come back to me and I will make it right. I will heal and send you out to love again and be hurt again and come back again.”
It’s his reminder that people are people. They are who they are and accepting them is accepting Him. Forgiving them, is acknowledging His sacrifice. There is no ignoring, or excusing just accepting.
My relationships with others may never be perfect, but the most important one I have is with Him. It’s the deepest, the most meaningful, the one that changes me, that saves me, that loves me when I look like I sucked on a lemon. It’s foolish to try to love someone to get them to love you back, it only leads to believing you aren’t worth loving when they fail. But if I can learn to love from His love, to love from a place of freedom, to love because loving is what I am meant to do, and when I don’t, it just hurts more, then maybe it will become less about me, and more about Him and them and everyone else. Then maybe I won’t have to worry about lies swirling about who I am and what I mean to people. Maybe I will start being secure in His love for me and stop worrying about how other people love me or if they even do. At least that’s the hope.
That and I will stop sucking on lemons.
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