Embracing Forgiveness

 So much has happened this year. The fruit of seeds planted, tended, and cared for over these last seven years. It may even go further back than I recognize.  Those earlier years were a blur of constant motion, rapid growth and change. Jason and I fell in love, graduated from college, took jobs, changed jobs, started graduate school, grieved a miscarriage, and rejoiced in a pregnancy that gave us our sweet and wonderful Logan.  There was the ordination process and eventually ordination; we moved from house to house, and delighted in a pregnancy that ended abruptly early, but gave us our loving, red-headed Lucas. We stumbled our way in love, grace, and the occasional expletive, as we learned what it meant to be married, to share a home and a life, to become parents, to figure out what it meant to be adults, to begin to recognize who we are and a bit about why God has made us.  The season of our life before moving to Greenfield was rich, beautiful, and could be described as ‘go big or go home.’ 

The pace of change has slowed down these last seven years. We found ourselves facing the death of loved ones and bearing witness to our childhood heroes battling cancer, heart disease, back surgery, and loneliness.  We began to do the difficult work of looking within, to face our hurts and raw growing edges.  Each time we were given the opportunity to judge these parts of ourselves in self-loathing, to ignore them and pretend they weren’t there, or just maybe, to accept our imperfections and the hurts we’ve carried all these years. We’ve been invited to know ourselves more deeply, and to offer ourselves love, acceptance, and joy. With the same kind of radical abandon with which God loves us. 

We recently found such a great sense of clarity about where God is calling us. After years of living on the edge, ever preparing for what’s next, we stopped and considered, maybe this place is what’s next. Maybe right now is what’s next.  The option of staying, of putting down roots, had never really been a serious option. That was always for later, when we went back ‘home’ to Maine. 

Instead we have discovered that home is wherever the four of us find ourselves. Home has been in the wilderness of Ireland, in the rocky earth underneath our tent in Southwest Harbor, in a shack on Matinicus, nearly twenty miles from the mainland. Home has been doing ‘church’ in a rental car in Kauai, or trapped with 1,000 mosquitoes driving along the west coast of Prince Edward Island.  Home is listening to the sweet laughter of our boys, their perfect snuggles, and our sly glances towards one another in the kitchen as the boys complain about their vegetables. Home is lying next to one another with our bodies entangled in the sheets, the feeling of complete contentment.  

This is a good life, and I’m glad we’ve realized the goodness of it in these wide middle years instead of in our old age. Even on the days it seems our world might be falling apart, the goodness of this life, this community, and all of God’s creation is enough to remain hopeful. To trust that when we lean in to God, one another, and our community that all really will be well. That Julian of Norwich knew what she was talking about when she said, "All shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” 

The clarity we’ve received this year has been accompanied by a new sense of inner freedom. My chest used to constantly feel tight, like a closet stuffed to the gills. Now things feel light, airy, and spacious. Maybe it was all this extra room that caused me to notice a collection of old hurts and resentments that I had tucked away. Maybe it’s what begged the question, why are you still holding onto these?

The first time I really embraced the work of forgiveness I was sixteen. I forgave my father for his alcoholism; for having to bear witness to his violence towards my mother; for his lies; for his abandonment; but primarily, for the weight of his absence. Just as Jacob wrestled with God by a stream, I wrestled with the choices of a man who drastically altered the course of my life by his inability to face his own life.  I’m not sure he had the strength to do the work of looking within, and sometimes I wonder what has become of him, and whether he might ever find peace. I hope so.  

What propelled me into forgiveness was not a newly acquired sense of maturity on the cusp of young adulthood.  Rather, it was an encounter with the risen Christ that changed me from the inside out. Like a wave pouring over me, I let go, I released the hurt and resentment, and began to find peace. 

It would appear the time has come again to embrace the work of forgiveness. I feel ready now. I have set boundaries that will help keep me healthy in this relationship, and I can embrace forgiveness. Both are possible. 

The hurts and resentments I’ve been harboring have not been useful. They do not help me love; they do not help me be in relationship; and they are certainly not providing any healing. The forgiveness required this time is less complicated than forgiving my father. It’s the work of forgiving a wonderful person whose hurts were much more slight, gradual, and honestly, almost always without intention. 

In the brokenness of my own humanity, I tucked these hurts away since I didn’t know what to do with them. Worse still, I would take them out and look at them whenever a new hurt was collected. They were like the seashells’ on a mantle within our bedroom.  Except instead of being beautiful reminders of the ebb and flow of real relationships, this collection has been hindering my relationship with this person and my own ability to be fully alive. This no longer feels useful, and in fact, I imagine my own behavior has caused hurt and harm.  

As I embrace forgiveness, I also take comfort in the ritual of the Sunday liturgy’s confession of sins:  “Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent...”

This confession is always matched with absolution. If we mean it, we will always be forgiven. That is the complete ridiculousness of our God’s love for us. It makes no sense, and at the same time gives sense to everything.  Embracing forgiveness is as much about forgiving ourselves as it is about forgiving those who have hurt us.  It’s about loving ourselves and loving our neighbors, as God loves us. 

I imagine embracing forgiveness this time around will be similar to the work of forgiving my father. Sometimes the hurt will be stirred up again, and I’ll have to sit with the full feeling of it for a moment before embracing forgiveness once again. Over and over, each time easier than the last. 

I also believe that as I embrace forgiveness of this person and myself, that I am invited to forgive the hurtful actions of a person at church last week. I am invited to forgive my own shortcomings at breakfast this morning when I was testy and short with my family as we began yet another day late for our engagements. I am invited to forgive the person who will hurt me tomorrow. Or worse, nearly unimaginable, I will have to forgive the people who will hurt my spouse or my children.  Including, when I am the culprit, when my thoughts, words, and deeds, or what I have left done and undone has been the cause of their hurt. And yet, this is the offer from God, indeed our calling to accept a holy invitation.  Might we engage in this ongoing  work of embracing forgiveness?

​One day at a time, over and over, each time easier than the last...