This may sound a bit strange to some but tonight, for the first time in I don't know how long, I was comfortable with myself and my thoughts. Enough so that I fell asleep on my couch just thinking!
This is like a rebirth for me because for the last several years, my thoughts have held me hostage. Hostage to a past I could not change. Hostage to a pain for which there is no cure. Hostage. Held in place with no answers and no future. But at the same time this unyield9ng hope that somehow I could beak free. I will explore that hope at a later time. Right now I want to talk about thought and thinking. Since 2012, I haven't read a book for pleasure. That's when I started to go to college and I thought that the books I would read would only hinder me and if I was serious about this education, I could at least sacrifice books. One of my first classes was Statistics. An accelerated summer course. I remember thinking that it was a poor choice to start with, something so demanding. I Aced the class and it surprised me. Another class that surprised me was a history course that required heavy reading about things you never heard of in high school (at least not high school in the 80's). I wrote six papers on the books I read and I got five A's and a B. Throughout my college career I have strived to do very well. But in the back of my mind, there was that voice telling me it should have been an A plus; That B should have been an A. There was always that voice saying I should have done better. It wasn't until my Algebra course that I learned to call that voice a liar. Algebra literally had me in tears because I just couldn't' get some of the concepts. The professor was not much help. When I asked why one parenthetical set in an equation should be multiplied but not the others, he said because two times three times four is twenty-four. He gave that same answer five times and I even as I type, I still don't get his answer. I came so close to quitting. But I discovered a thought process in the back of my mind. It always said I can't understand this. Having understood this, I changed that thought to "just because I don't understand it, it does not mean that I can't understand it. I went to the internet and found purplemath.com. I passed Algebra with a B. You may be thinking what all this has to do with me being comfortable with my own thoughts. For all intents and purposes, I have overcome my own thoughts based on the above. However, what is different is that for the first time (probably a first in my 45 years) in my memory, I did NOT HAVE ONE NEGATIVE THOUGHT ABOUT MYSELF! I thought about possibilities, philosophies and Truth. I thought about tomorrow and that old fear didn't creep in. I was comfortable to sleep on my couch alone and I was not afraid. I even smiled when I woke up and saw that I was still on the couch. I can say today that while I may hesitate; while I may still get scared, I will no longer condemn myself with my own thoughts. That small voice in the back of my head that I thought was my conscious is nothing more that the lie created to keep me in a place I never wanted to be. Freedom of the mind. It is liberating! Know the Truth and the Truth will make you Free. Then came Peter to Him and said, Lord how oft shall my brother
sin against me, and I forgive him? Til seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, until seven times: but, until seventy times seven. Matthew 18:21-22 So my brother (or neighbor, or friend, father, mother, anybody) can sin against me 490 times before I can stop forgiving? How do I keep a record of this? It would be difficult and time consuming to keep a database of all the wrongs that people have done to me and even if I started now, today, that list would grow to the point of unmanageability. Who has time for that? So what did Jesus mean here? We know that forgiveness is a process. You must acknowledge a wrong, confront the pain, understand yourself and the wrongdoer and the role each play and choose, deliberately so, not to be bitter, not to expect, nor demand, any restitution from the wrongdoer and ultimately change your mind in a way that is contrary to your basic instinct to exact some revenge. So you go through this process and it’s over. You’re free in your forgiveness. Free not to be bitter. Free to no longer be hurt. Free to leave the past in the past. Right? How do you forget, though? You’re human. We don’t oft forget a wrong, even after we’ve processed it and forgiven the wrongdoer. Too often, the memory resurfaces like a submarine crashing through the ocean’s surface in an emergency. It’s there. Big as life, putting on a show like Shamu at Sea World. The memories want your attention, they want to be seen and acknowledged. They will not be suppressed. What is wrong with me? You ask yourself. Why can’t I just get over it and move on like everybody else? Maybe I need to see a therapist, talk it out some more, cause these memories won’t go away and remembering hurts. I’ve forgiven them!!! I’m supposed to be free!!! WTF “Until seventy times seven,” Jesus said. Forgiveness isn’t a single event, it’s ongoing. Jesus knows we are only human and He knows we won’t forget. Seventy times seven isn’t a mathematical equation; it’s a way of life. Jesus didn’t mean for us to keep a record. He said He wouldn’t do that to us. He told us that He would save us and wipe our slate clean. He said we are forgiven of our sins—past, present and future—we are forgiven. Jesus knows each of us intimately enough that He can count the hairs on our head (Matthew 10:30). He knows about our closets. He can unlock them and call our skeletons out by name. He knows our sin, but never once does He say “Remember when you….?”He did say, however, before trying to remove the speck from your brother’s eye, first remove the beam from your own eye (Matthew 7:3-5), so that you might see clearly enough and not poke out your brother’s eye. We all see things with our own eyes, from our own perspective. We see things through our own pain. The pain clouds our sight and reduces our vision so that a given situation has gray areas where we are unsure. We’re unsure of ourselves and because of a lack of confidence we allow ourselves to act on what we know—pain. The memories stay with us. The pain seems to never end. How can we trust anyone—ever? How can we trust ourselves? “Until seventy times seven!” Forgiveness. Over and over and over and over and over and over. Forgiveness. Memories that hurt-forgive the wrongdoer. Forgive yourself. Every day, all day. Forgiveness is not a one-time event for a single wrong. Forgiveness is a way of life. Just ask Jesus! |
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