Many years ago I overheard a conversation between two young siblings in which the girl screeched, “Mom…! Brother just said the ‘S’ word.” Oh my, I thought THE ‘S’ word, these two were so young how would they have even heard that word let alone use it? Well, apparently their terror stricken mother was thinking the same thing because she asked her daughter to tell her what exactly brother had said. “Noooooo….mommy we aren’t allowed to use that word!” “It’s OK” reassured the young mom. “I need to know exactly what your brother said; you will not get into trouble for telling me.” After a brief pause the little girl replied, “He said SHUT UP!”
Whew…was that all, “Shut Up.” Although not something we allowed our children to say either, I know the mother in me was screaming inside just hoping that it wasn’t the other ‘S’ word and I breathed a sigh of relief as I am sure that young mother did also, because it could have been far worse!
Have you used the “F” word latey? Not THE “F” word but another one, just like “Shut Up” it is not something that is spoken about much in homes or relationships. There does tend to be a bit of a taboo about saying it and putting it into practice, and in our it’s-all-about-me society this is certainly not a commonly used part of our vocabulary.
The word is FORGIVENESS.
Let that sink in for just a little bit…forgiveness…now breathe in…forgiveness…breathe out…forgiveness. How does that feel? Most of us know how that word fits within our belief systems. Yes, our sins have been paid for, we are forgiven…thank you God! But when was the last time YOU forgave someone else for something they did?
Face it we have all been wronged at some point in our lives; perhaps betrayed by a parent, spouse, co-worker, boss, best friend, neighbor,…the list could go on and on. Do you want to be that person that forgets everything EXCEPT a grudge, or the person who remembers everything except the grudge? Sometimes I am shocked and disheartened to hear about the stories of betrayal within my group of friends and I wonder how they will ever forgive and move on. Think about the young pregnant wife who is in the hospital with complications related to her pregnancy, and her husband is having multiple ‘hook-ups’ because according to him he deserves it. He deserves to be disloyal to his wife and children? Another young wife is the hospital giving birth while the father of her child is downstairs getting high, or with his girlfriend, or out getting drunk with his buddies. What about the wife who is working herself to a frazzle to support her husband through grad school/med school/law school and how exactly does he unwind…by having an affair with a fellow student because after all his wife is too tired/cranky/busy to tend to his needs. The scenario can be flipped too…the busy corporate wife who travels with her exciting executive job while her house-husband stays home to babysit the kids, when she gets home all he can talk about is little Johnny’s poopy diaper and the horrible day they had at the park, and she just can’t relate. So what is her answer, well she finds a fellow corporate executive who wears $1000 suits, eats at the finest restaurants and drinks only the finest wines…after all she deserves it, right?
So how does one move on? Should we forgive? What does that look like anyway? Forgive and forget, isn’t that what we were always taught?
Matthew 18:21-22 is about the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant:
21 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”
22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. (NIV)
Now think about what the King James Version says:
Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.
In the name of thoroughness I wanted to do the multiplication on this and took this at face value (as I typically do) so I multiplied 70×7 which equals 490. So is Jesus telling us to forgive 490 times and once we reach 491 we walk away? Consider a woman I know who said the loudest noise she ever heard was the sound of her stiletto heels as she walked across a marble floor because no one( most specifically the man she thought was the love of her life, her best friend…her soul-mate) was coming after her. She tried for more than 20 years to forgive, but she didn’t know the whole story as to why exactly things had unfolded the way they did that night. She carried hurt, pain, shame and worst of all un-forgiveness in a heavy suitcase. Finally a time came and the two began to talk and all of the junk in that suitcase melted away and it only took one simple act of forgiveness to heal all the old wounds. She had never really tried to forgive, she just carried the pain and hoped it would diminish with time. It only took one act of forgiveness not 490.
Now consider if 70×7 actually means 70 to the 7th power. Now I am no mathematician but I figured there is a mathematician out there that has posted the answer to this on the internet and the number is….8.23543×10 to the 12th. OK, there are 525,949 minutes in a year and based on an average life of 84 years we then have 44,179,716 minutes and divide that by 70 to the 7th power and I have no idea what that number equals (remember…I am not a mathematician) but that means we are live a life of forgiveness…we are to breathe it with our every breath. Not carry un-forgiveness around as our beast of burden.
I have a feeling I know what some of you are thinking as you read this, “What about…abuse…?” Unfortunately I have more than a few friends who were abused wives…each with a unique story and each one has found a way to move on. Some have found it in their hearts to forgive because drugs and/or alcohol were involved with the behavior, others forgive because there are children involved (but they didn’t stick around for the abuse to continue). I am by no means an expert…I just want to offer food for thought related to how forgiveness can fit into our lives.
So now lets let the discussion begin with a few questions: What exactly does forgiveness look like? Can we, should we forget? Let’s start a dialogue about forgiveness…what have you had to forgive, what have you been forgiven of? Let this be a real discussion about real issues, perhaps something you have been struggling with or are trying to help someone else with.
I will start the ball rolling: Every day I wake up faced with two choices 1-forgive my spouse of infidelity or 2-choose to forgive. So far every day, even on day one, I have chosen to forgive. It is not always easy and there are days I wish I could find it within myself to walk away and start fresh. There are days I want so badly to throw all the bad stuff in his face and make him hurt as much as I did and sometimes still do, but I know that will neither change nor solve anything, and so I chose to forgive., I must fortify myself with the Word of God because this journey is not one meant to go alone.
Breathe in…forgiveness…breathe out….forgiveness…breathe in…forgiveness…breathe out…forgiveness…
Dawna
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