Forgiveness

I was reading Anne Lamott's "Travelling Mercies - Some Thoughts on Faith" today. Skimming it and reading my favorite parts, when I came upon the chapter on forgiveness. I love this chapter. She tells about a mother to one of her son's friends. An "enemy lite" that she finally realized wasn't an enemy. She was projecting worries and fears on this woman because "it hurt too much to carry it herself." After she finally realized that she was being "mad as a hatter" she finally was able to let go and be healed. Or at least take a baby step in the right direction.

Well, I started thinking about the word "enemy" and it hit me. I have to forgive my enemies. Not just people who I project stuff on, or people who annoy me. My ENEMIES. People who have hurt me and hurt the people that I love. Deeply, deeply hurt. C.S. Lewis says, "If we really want to learn how to forgive, perhaps we had better start with something easier than the Gestapo."

Well, I have 3 "Gestapo Agents" that I will eventually have to forgive. If I want to experience love and forgiveness - from God, from others - I have to forgive these trully horrible people who were a part of my life. That's quite a tall order. Anne writes that "God is for giving and that we are here for giving too. And that to withhold love or blessings is to be completely delusional." that "Everywhere she turned there were helpful hints on loving one's enemies, on turning the other cheek, and on how doing that makes you look in a whole new direction." I long to be in that place. To have the clean feeling of forgiveness coursing through me and my eyes in a new direction.

She also writes, "There were admonitions about the self-destructiveness of not forgiving people, and reminders that this usually doesn't hurt other people as much as it hurts you. In fact, not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die." Well, that's where I'm at. Filled with rat poison and (self?) justified hate and anger staring at the rat(s) in my mind's eye and waiting for them to die. Horribly. Painfully.

I will have to process this for awhile. Put a note in God's in box for some celestial help. And maybe I should look for an "enemy lite." You know, for the practice. . .