You'll remember last year, I blogged about forgiveness...and I blogged about it some more....and some more...you know it shouldn't be surprising that a woman who has seen as much rejection as I has an ongoing issue with forgiveness. But you know, it gets tiresome for me too, dear reader, so don't feel guilty. But with this post, I knew I was getting close. I readily admitted I didn't have it all figured out, but maybe what I uncovered would point me in the right direction, right?
But still I struggled. And that load of baggage was getting heavier and heavier. I knew I needed to set it down, but I didn't know how. Like Kim Possible's arch enemy threw a bondo ball at me and my baggage.
Something occurred to me today, that may well be the piece of the puzzle I've been missing. Did you have this piece? When the need to forgive is hurting you the most, often we thing that the kindness and love of the forgiving act needs to be pointed at the person we know we need to forgive. But we are wrong. Lack of forgiveness is an act of carrying a wrong doing around like it belongs to you, when it actually doesn't. Yep I got that part right. But what I missed was this. When you carry that hurt around, you actually continue to hurt yourself with that same act over and over again. You might recognize this process. It's the one used by all the bad guys trying to torture information out of some brave secret agent. Mel Gibson getting shocked over and over and again...they hit him over and over in the exact same spot and he screams in agony. That is what we do to ourselves when we carry around a slight. We hit ourselves with it over, and over....and over. And finally it is time to answer your interrogator's question, the question that it has been whispering in your ear for days, weeks, months.
"You deserved it, didn't you? You did something wrong, you weren't good enough, you are lacking as a human? Too fat? Too skinny? Not smart enough? You know it is your fault...admit it...it is your fault."
When you can look it straight in the eye and simply say, "No." It is over.
No.
No.
NO!
Saying no is an act of setting the baggage down, leaving it in the road for it's proper owner. It's freedom.
