But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. (Luke 6:35)
Nothing is less
realistic than imagining you can work up pleasant thoughts about those who hurt
or belittled you. We carry a thousand wounds from childhood and whenever we have been injured along the way, typically trying to push them aside as we
age as if that were possible.
Ignore them as we may,
they remain in wounded corners of the psyche, appearing at unpredictable times to
remind us that there is work left undone.
Take a long walk away
from the noise of traffic, construction down the street, a plane overhead, the music
of a familiar voice calling you to necessities of the day. Soon enough, the
mind becomes a quiet pool from whose depths
memories appear, words you wish you’d never heard, a disparaging glance,
slights large and small that still cut from decades past.
No act of will can make
them disappear, and the self-righteous ego rails against the hurt, conjuring reprisals
to hurl against the ghosts that haunt your wounded heart. Or maybe that’s just
me.
But I doubt it.
The necessary work is
that of forgiveness, which is a really an invitation to ride the wave of a very
great love, letting it pick you up and carry you along until it breaks on the
rocks, splashing over the wounded places in your heart and the wounding faces
you have long carried.
Maybe then you can see
them as they are, every one of them as imperfect as yourself and as needy. And as
loved, by the Love who is that wave longing to lift us from old hurts into the freedom
to let it go, knowing ... Love has us
all, every last one of us.
It the only healing.
David L. Miller
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