Limitless Forgiveness

Dear Old Friend,

Ever since I wrote my last letter, where I talked about shame, I’ve been thinking about how God made us so that we will feel bad about ourselves when we “miss the mark” and do things which we know are wrong, as an alert to wake us up and turn us to him. Conversely, he made us so that we will feel good when we do what we know is right, particularly when we offer grace to someone, which makes us want to do it more often.  That led me to think about how I have been acting lately.

I’ve been under a lot of pressure at work, feeling like I am being crushed by all of the demands and expectations. Because of the nature of my job, I end up spending a great deal of time, which I don’t have to spare, fixing problems which other people have created by making, what I view to be, careless mistakes.  My tolerance for these ‘careless mistakes’ has become virtually non-existent. All too often I have found myself snapping and snarling at my co-workers, sometimes in front of others; or, I have fired off critical emails detailing what they have done wrong and exactly how they need to do things differently from now on. 

The thing is, I love those people, and when I am in my right mind, I want nothing but good things for them; so, as a result of my behavior, I haven’t been feeling very good about myself.  Here I am, touting grace, but doing a pretty poor job of being gracious to the people I spend more time with than anyone else. 

So, I made a decision last weekend that I would stop trying to beat my co-workers into submission; and, instead, I would be patient and forgiving in the face of their errors.  I imagined their grateful and relieved faces as I showered them with mercy and kindness, instead of berating them for their failings.  I knew we would all feel better!

On the day I returned to work, however, that resolve disappeared before I ever made it to my desk, as I was swarmed by people with issues the minute I walked in the door.  Soon I didn’t even remember that I had intended to be a kinder, gentler version of myself, as I huffed and puffed at people who, as I saw it, were making my life miserable with their inattentiveness to important details. 

In my car on the way home that night, shame at my failure swept over me.  Guiltily, I remembered the parable of the Unmerciful Servant found in Matthew 18.  The chapter begins with Peter, Jesus’ disciple, asking how many times he was required to forgive his brother, and offering the number seven as a generous estimate.  Jesus’ response was, “Not seven times, but seventy seven times”, which didn’t really mean that at 78 Peter could cut his brother off; that number actually represented limitless forgiveness. 

Then, Jesus told Peter a story to illustrate his answer.  He said that the Kingdom of Heaven was like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his subjects who owed him money, so he called in a man who owed him the equivalent of many millions of dollars.  The point was, it was so great a debt that it was completely beyond the realm of possibility for the man to ever repay it. Because the man couldn’t pay, the King gave the order that the man, his wife, his children and all that he had, were to be sold to repay what little could be repaid of the debt.

The man fell on his knees and begged for mercy, saying that, if the king would be patient, he would pay back everything he owed.  Instead of taking that worthless offer, the king felt sorry for him and, in an act of extreme compassion, cancelled the entire debt and let him go!

Then, when the forgiven man left the palace, he “found” one of his fellow servants who owed him a couple of bucks.  Jesus doesn’t say he ran into him, there’s the inference that he went to look for the guy, and he grabbed him and began to choke him, demanding that he pay him the two dollars he had borrowed.  The fellow servant (I translated that as co-worker) begged him to be patient and promised to pay him back, but the man refused and had his ‘debtor’ thrown into prison until the debt was satisfied.

Miserably, I thought of myself as being like the bad guy in the story.  I know how much God has forgiven me; and most assuredly it was a debt I could never repay.  And, yet, there I was, being a jerk at work! Then, suddenly it struck me that this was the point Jesus was making:  We are all like that man to some extent.  Jesus wasn’t telling Peter the story to make him feel guilty; he was simply describing what all of us do.  We are all capable of being grateful for the tremendous miracle of forgiveness which we have been given and being, simultaneously, unforgiving toward others; and, we are so dim-witted we usually don’t even recognize we are doing it. 

Jesus told the story so that one day, after Jesus' death and resurrection, Peter would “get it”.  Peter, and everyone who understands that Jesus paid our entire debt on the cross, can clearly see, through this story, the absurdity of wanting to put a limit on our forgiveness of others, since we have been the recipients of such lavish pardon.  I realized that, although I am similar to the man in the story, by God’s grace I am more like Peter.  Thankfully, God is teaching me that the antidote to a hard heart is not more guilt, but a deepening understanding of the boundless love and mercy I have been and am being given.

My coworkers know that I love them and that as soon as I finish yelling at them I forgive them and go back to loving them again; and, blessedly, they generously forgive me for my rants.  My hope and prayer is that grace will finally so completely saturate my heart that my rants will stop before they start; but, until then, I will gratefully rest on the promise of God’s limitless forgiveness, made possible through his Son.

Love Always,

Bonnie

 

 

Splashed Shame

Dear Old Friend,

Since I started writing to you about my childhood, you’ve mentioned several times how sad you are that, even though we were close back then, you didn’t really know how I felt about what was happening to me because I didn’t talk with you about it.  The truth is, the reason I didn’t talk with you about it was that I was ashamed and hiding.  Sin splashes shame on us in the same way a convertible going through a mud puddle splashes mud; the driver isn’t the only one who gets covered.  There’s plenty of mud to go around.

I can still picture lying on the bed in your room listening to you talk about your life and your feelings, and being envious of your freedom to be so open.  I longed to share with someone, but I remember being terrified that you might ask me to, and when you did, I became quite adept at deflecting your questions and turning the focus back to you. 

My shame wasn’t because of what I had done.  The decisions my parents had made caused me to view myself differently, and to fear how others would view me if they knew the ugliness of my situation; so, I covered myself with fig leaves, hid in the trees and pretended, even to myself, that I was fine.  I want you to know it wasn’t your fault that I didn’t open up to you!

As you might guess from my biblical references above, I was reading Genesis chapter 3 this week.  That’s the chapter where Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the one and only tree God told them not to touch.  What fascinated me most was their reaction after they did what they knew was wrong.  There was no society which had conditioned their response; there was no religion which had brainwashed them; their reaction to breaking a rule was unadulterated, immediate and innate: they were ashamed. 

Their first reaction was not simply guilt over what they had done; shame immeditely affected how they viewed themselves and each other. Scripture says they realized they were naked, 

so they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves.  The very first sin made them feel exposed and vulnerable, and they became self-protective. Think about it, from whom were they hiding their nakedness?  There were only the two of them!  They were ashamed, so the first thing they did was to hide from each other.

Then, their shame led them to hide from God.  When they heard him coming, they tried to conceal themselves among the trees.  The reason they gave for hiding was not, “I hid because I did something bad”; they hid because they felt that they were bad: “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.” That is the difference between guilt and shame.

And, finally, their self-protectiveness caused them to hide even from themselves.  When questioned about what happened, Adam blamed God for giving him the woman, and Eve blamed the serpent for deceiving her.  They each pointed away from themselves and hid from the truth. Shame is what keeps us from being able to admit we were wrong.

Sin, whether ours or someone else’s, always isolates us: from each other, from God and from ourselves.  We are all hiding, in our shame, feeling vulnerable and fearing exposure. Not one of us is unaffected.  But, the problem is that we are powerless to remove our own shame.  We can say that it doesn’t exist and act as if it isn’t there; but, in the end, that is just another form of hiding. 

God knew the depths of our need, not just to be freed from the guilt of what we have done, but also to be freed from the prison of our disgrace; so he sent his Son to bear all of sin and its consequences, including our sin-splashed shame.  Because of what he did for us, we are free to come out of hiding.  We can live without the pretense that we are whole and undamaged.  We can proclaim the truth of our mutual brokenness, and the message of the One who has met us there with love, grace and forgiveness, and brought us comfort, healing and freedom.  We can begin to relate to each other without shame because of the one who took our nakedness upon himself and clothed us in his righteousness.

I wrote a poem about this, and I want to share it with you:

 

 UNASHAMED

You examine your humanity

Under a microscope

And feel ashamed.

Your tender conscience

Cannot bear

The imperfections

You find there

And so you hide,

Like the first man

After the fall,

Afraid of exposing

Your nakedness

To all.

Yet all are naked...

Most unaware.

Sometimes you envy


The oblivion

That is theirs,

To walk unclothed

Denying shame,

To live without accepting blame.

Yet

Awareness is a gift of God

Which draws you to the cross,

Where Jesus bore


Your nakedness

And gave to you


His righteousness

Which covers all.

Now you walk in freedom,

Unashamed,

Wearing Jesus' robe

And bearing Jesus' name.

 

I’m so grateful for the freedom he has given me to come out of hiding!

 

Love Always,

Bonnie

 

The Paths

 

Dear Old Friend

Since my last letter, I’ve thought a lot about who Jesus chose to hang out with when he was on earth, and why.  For much of my life, I’m pretty sure I would not have been one of his first choices, which is ironic, since I worked so hard to be who I thought he wanted me to be.

I wasn’t surprised when you told me that you also remember the chapel speaker from our freshman year in high school; the one who worked us up into an emotional frenzy until most of us felt compelled to publicly confess our sins, and pressure others to do the same.  Since writing to you about that experience, I have concluded that it marked the beginning of my insecurity with God. 

Up to that point, I had never really worried about whether or not God loved me.  As a child, I was told that he loved me, and I simply believed that he did. But that week of chapel services came at a vulnerable point in my life, when I already doubted everyone else’s love for me, and that speaker tore at my exposed emotions by telling me that God wished he could love me, but I had disappointed him with my bad behavior and separated myself from his love.  However, in his mercy, God was waiting for me to give up my wicked ways so that he could open his arms and welcome me back.

There I was, feeling completely abandoned by my family, thinking that God was the only one on whom I could still depend, but what I heard was, “God wants to help you, but you have removed yourself from his care.  You have turned away from him in rebellion. Repent of your sins and he will be with you again.”  I knew how desperately I needed God, so right then I believed I had no other choice than to try to be worthy of his love.

The fact of the matter is, I was at a pivotal moment in my life, and things could have gone either way. I could have chucked it all and turned my back on God because he had turned his back on me. I could have given up and run as hard and fast as I could from him, and my life would have taken a different course.  You shared with me that this was the path you ultimately chose.  But, because I couldn’t face the thought of being without the One who gave my life its only semblance of stability, I didn’t.  Instead, I chose the path of the neurotic rule keeper.  I wanted to appease the deity so that he would not leave me, and it became the pattern of my life.

Because I was also a people pleaser, I set out to be a super sweet, helpful rule keeper.  I was normally too insecure to be blatantly obnoxious about my righteousness, although I can recall some occasions when I managed to be embarrassingly insufferable.  Overall, however, I’m pretty sure that I achieved a rather saintly aura.  I’m not implying that my efforts to be a good person weren't genuine; I was both quite sincere and highly motivated to succeed!

My motivation was two-fold: I had made a vow to myself, when my parents divorced, that I would not fulfill the prediction I read in a magazine article, that I would be badly damaged as a result of being a child of divorce; and now I added to that the belief that I had to be good in order to keep God’s love.

The problem was that, despite my sincerity and motivation, I was operating under a total delusion.  As I mentioned in a previous letter, no matter how hard I tried not to be damaged, I was. We are all damaged by life in this world. Pretending we’re not is exhausting and we eventually run out of steam. The other part of the delusion involved thinking that I had to, and might actually be able to, appease the deity by being good enough to keep him from leaving me. 

In a twisted sort of way, that chapel speaker, and many others like him, was partially correct: sin does separate us from a holy God who demands perfect obedience.  But the speaker got it terribly wrong from that point on!

The truth is, this holy God, who demands perfect obedience, knew that no matter how sincere or motivated any of us might be, we could never fulfill what he required, and he loved us so much that he could not bear the the idea of our separation from him; so for that reason he sent his Son to perfectly obey every rule on our behalf.  As a result, he can now promise, without reservation, that he will never leave us or forsake us, not because of what we do to appease him, but because he, once and for all, appeased himself!

And that finally leads me back to what I was thinking about the kinds of people Jesus liked to hang out with when he was here.  He went straight for the people like you who, at their pivotal moment, ran hard and fast, believing they weren’t good enough; those who had turned their backs on the One they thought had turned his back first.  Jesus sought them out because they weren’t delusional; they knew they didn’t have a shred of righteousness to recommend themselves to God, so he didn’t have to hack his way through their pretenses.  He simply loved them the way they were, and because they knew it was genuine, they gratefully loved him right back.

The toughest nuts to crack were the ones, like me, who were desperately trying to earn God’s love; particularly if they thought they were succeeding in pulling it off.  He had to pound on them until he brought them to a point where they finally realized they couldn’t earn his love, and they weren’t pulling it off, and that it was okay for them to admit it and simply accept his love as an undeserved gift. That is a very hard sell for us people-pleasing, deity-appeasing types; but once we get it, our relief and joy knows no bounds!

We have all headed down one or the other of those paths, at diferent times, for varied reasons. On the surface, one way appears to be the path of rebellion and the other the path of righteousness; but, in reality, both lead away from God and his grace. 

I am so grateful, my friend, that God brought the two of us back, as adults, to the simple faith we had in his love as children!

Love Always,

Bonnie

EPILOGUE: Refocus

 Dear Old Friend,

You asked me why I decided to write to you about these formative chapters of my life.  For many years I would have had no other motive than a desire to talk about what I had suffered.  I would have tried to make myself the hero, the innocent victim, who nobly triumphed despite my circumstances; an inspiration to all.  The problem is, as I mentioned in my first letter to you, it would not have been true.  I exhausted myself trying, but I never managed to triumph despite my circumstances.

We all believe that we are the heroes, or perhaps the anti heroes, of our own life stories; regardless of whether I’m the good guy or the bad guy, I think the story of me is about me; but the gospel teaches that there is something much more profound going on in every life chronicle than first meets the eye.  Once I allow myself to consider the possibility that the central figure of my life may not be me, I can begin to see things I never saw before.

When my children were young, one of them got a 3D Stereogram Trapper Keeper in which to carry their schoolwork. At first I had no idea there was anything to look at on the binder cover other than a lot of colorful geometric designs, but then I was informed that there was much more to that glorified notebook than I could ever have imagined.  My children told me that if I looked at those designs long enough, in just the right way, a 3D image would appear.  All three of them could look at those colorful patterns and see the picture.  I, on the other hand, could see nothing but the colorful patterns no matter how I tried.  I asked my children to tell me what the 3D picture looked like, in the hopes that, if I knew what I was looking for, I could make myself see it.  I had them try to explain to me exactly how they refocused their vision and then, after they went to bed at night, I would stare at the Trapper Keeper.  Finally, one glorious night, I squinted and focused my eyes in just the right way and suddenly the image popped out at me!  It was amazing!  I couldn’t understand how I had missed it all the times before. 

The reason I decided to write these letters is a lot like that. From what I know about God and his grace, I knew that the experiences of my childhood were more than just a pattern of pain and fear, abandonment and loss.  I knew that I needed to reexamine the shapes and designs of my past through the eyes of grace.  I needed to refocus so that what popped out at me was the image of the only true Hero of any and every story, who was with me every floundering moment, comforting and carrying me, strengthening and sustaining me.  I needed to see how God used the times when I was the weakest and most afraid, to teach me to depend on him and to show me that he would always be faithful.

I also needed to see that God’s faithfulness to me never has depended and never will depend on my faithfulness to him. Thankfully, God’s relationship with me is not based on “this for that” because I could never produce enough “this” in order to get “that” from God!  Instead, because God loved me (and you) so much, he sent Jesus to satisfy every “this”, so that he could give me (and you) “everything for nothing”.   We have nothing to give him but our need, and God freely gives us everything to supply that need.  We don’t have to deserve it and we can’t earn it.  It is gift.  It is grace.

I knew, by faith, that God’s grace was to be found, hidden within the pieces of these experiences, I just had to refocus in order to see it.  God loved my mother as she struggled, in her brokenness, to find her way; and he loves me as I do the same.  He whispers forgiveness and reassurance to me, when I weep with regret, in the same way he must have whispered to my mother. Writing to you has helped me to finally see God, not myself, as the central figure of my story. 

I know that my letters have brought up your own painful past.  We have all suffered to one extent or another; certainly many have suffered far greater tragedies than I have! But I pray that God enables you to see, through your own story, that he can take every single experience, whether painful or joyful, beautiful or ugly, righteous or rebellious and use it to draw you to him.  We all need to know that nothing is able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:39)

Love Always,

Bonnie

The Hum

 Dear Old Friend,

Since writing my last letter to you, about my mother leaving once more for Hawaii, I have spent a great deal of time thinking about the relationship I had with her from that point on.  At the end of that letter you will see that I referred to my bitterness, self-pity, hard-heartedness, unforgiveness and sense of entitlement.  Sadly, those are the words which defined the way I related to her for many years. 

It wasn’t a conscious decision on my part, it was simply the outgrowth of the attitude I fostered in my heart.  I didn’t even recognize it for what it was.  I had been hurt, and I was angry, but when my mother returned from Hawaii over a year later, this time to stay, I thought I had put that all behind me.  I had not.  Part of the problem was that I was a teenager by then, a stage in life where we typically rebel in an attempt to see ourselves as individuals, separate from our parents.  As with many teenagers, I developed a haughty, arrogant posture toward her, but I never outgrew it.

From the outside, I imagine that we appeared to be very close, but my resentment toward her was always just barely under the surface.  Others may not have noticed, but I’m sure my mother was aware of the steady hum of unforgiveness emanating from me. 

To her credit, she kept trying, over and over, to demonstrate her love for me through the years, despite that hum.  I accepted her offerings, but they were never enough to appease me.  From my point of view, whatever she did was “too little, too late”.  I felt magnanimous for allowing her to be a part of my life.  The sad fact is, I only see this clearly now, in hindsight. 

During my mother’s final years, caring for her needs became a large part of my life.  This was during a time when I was a recent widow with three teenage children to support, and I remember a moment when I had the terribly self-righteous thought that at least I wasn’t leaving her when she needed me, the way she had left me; and, instantly I recognized that thought for the ugly thing it was. I was reminded, then, that my mother was not just my mother; she was God’s child, as I was, and that made us not only mother and daughter, but sisters in Christ.  Maybe for the first time ever, I was able, that day, to view my mother as just a person; another broken, sinful, fellow human being in as much need of love, mercy and forgiveness as I was.  That was the day the hum finally stopped.

The night before my mother died, the nursing staff called me to say that she wasn’t feeling well and had stopped eating.  I went to visit her then, to see if I could get her to eat something.  Her dementia had progressed to the point that she had a difficult time verbalizing a thought.  I had become quite adept at figuring out what she wanted to say, and then saying it for her.  She always rewarded me with a grateful smile when I got it right. 

When I arrived I couldn’t get her to eat anything, but I was able to get her to take a few sips of pineapple juice, her favorite.  Then, she began to try to say something to me.  She had an urgent look on her face as she struggled to make her lips form the words she had in her head.  She forced out the word “I”, but the next word just would not come.  She looked me straight in the eyes and grabbed my hand.  I understood, then, and said, “I know, Mom, I love you, too,” but the determined look did not leave her face, and she kept fighting to speak until finally, with great effort, she was able to string the words together herself, “I love you.”  Those were the last words she ever said to me.

The next morning I received the call that my mother was being taken to the hospital.  I raced there with my youngest daughter and found her, unconscious, in one of the emergency room cubicles.  I asked the nurse whether my mother could hear me and she told me she believed she could.  Her vital signs had been steadily declining and the nurse told me gently that it was just a matter of time now.  I walked up to my mother, reached for her hand and leaned into her ear.  I told her I was there and saw her pulse and blood pressure increase in response.  I knew she heard me.  I told her then that I loved her, and that she had been a good mother.  I told her that I knew she was tired, and that it was okay if she was ready to rest now, and that I would be with her; then my daughter and I watched her slowly slip away.

As you know, most people feel guilt after a loved one dies.  I was tormented.  I was finally able to see that my mother’s choices, while hurtful, were never made with the intent to hurt me.  She was simply a woman, like me, living her life with her own baggage, doing the best she could.  She realized the pain she caused me and she spent the rest of her life trying to atone. 

In the years since my mother’s death, I have learned what it is like for my choices to be the source of pain for my own children.  I understand so much more how my unforgiveness must have affected my mother and I have found it to be very difficult to forgive myself for my hardness of heart. 

Now, perhaps, it is clearer to you why the message of God’s grace is so important to me.  I know how desperately I long for forgiveness (we all do), and how undeserving I am (we all are); yet God tells me over and over that I am deeply loved and completely forgiven – not because I have earned it, but because his Son earned it on my behalf.  It is something I need him to tell me again every day; and he does.

Our stories are all different, but God’s grace applies to each story in the same way. Thank you for helping me sort through mine.

Love Always,

Bonnie