forgive

but nothing is impossible for God (Luke 1:27)
I need You. No other way to do it….

over the weekend I realized that there are more “debts” that need to be canceled…some big…some trivial.

One big issue I have (and yes I mean have, and not had) is with someone who chose to not help me when I really, really, really needed help. I was physically injured and he was capable of helping me, but by his own admission he simply chose not to. I almost gag when I think of him as being a brother in Christ (I think he’s a piece of…garbage).

Not sure how to deal with this one.

I started making prayer beads, then morphed into affirmation bracelets. Each bracelet has 7 main beads, each bead different. The idea is to meditate on all the affirmations in the morning and then choose one to use as a mantra during the day. I chose forgiveness as the theme. Here are the affirmations:

• I will let go of the past and let my wounds heal
• I silence old negative messages and replace them with healthy thoughts
• I accept my mistakes and let them contribute to my learning and growth
• I see this person in the now, free from all past feelings, thoughts, and beliefs.
• Today I create a new generation of thoughts, emotions, and beliefs.
• I have positive memories of loved ones.
• When someone hurts me, it is a call for help and requires a response of love.

I just need to simply stop holding grudges and let go.

Just bought The Four Agreements by Miguel Ruiz. One of the things he writes about is that people do things because of them and not because of you. This way of thinking really helps the situation and people I need to forgive.

Instead of doing mean things like kicking myself for falling into my old patterns. Not easy.

But first some background…

Now that we’re slowly getting over the hurt and stuckification of the 28K fiasco, we had the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Money Day, also known as Thursday, also known as payday, except that there was a giant snafu with our paycheck company and there was no payday. It should be noted that this is a bit of spaz / panic attack inducing moment for Jess. And then… I lost my wallet. So I went from “I have no money” to “I have no money, no credit card, no bus pass, I seriously HAVE NO MONEY!!! and I’m in the middle of Ville St Laurent wearing a skirt that I can’t walk any further in!!!!” FREAKING OUT!!!! would be a good way of explaining it.

The good of this is that I have a crazy awesome friend who brought me cash rapido presto (my new favorite word), which was right around the point where I lost the ability to speak English coherently. Also much crying and laughing manically in the middle of VSL. So we cab home and start the process of picking up the pieces… Calling the banks, calling the credit card, calling the credit bureaus, etc, etc, etc… My body, not happy with me.

This morning, one of my old patterns came back to life. The “let’s skip work and screw the world / myself because I’m having a bad day” one. So I hid in bed with my cell phone turned off. (The official version is that I forgot to plug it in and my alarm clock is on there.) I woke up around 11 am and turned on the phone, when my boss called me. Called my coworker and apologized profusely (I was also upset at him for other stuff, but that’s another tangent), figured out that someone was going in to replace me, later spoke to her and apologized profusely.

So my job is not in jeopardy, but missing a day of pay = SUCKS! And the old patterns… I am not pleased at this. And then I proceeded to hide in bed until 7pm.

However, this is me. This is my brain on patterns. I am taking steps to work on my patterns. I am getting better at recognizing what I need and learning to ask for it. This was a big upset and I probably should have taken more precautions to help myself feel okay again. This doesn’t mean that I’m going to completely fall back into my old patterns of not going to work at all. This is just one, small, little slip up and I am going to pick myself back up. I trust in myself.

And on that note, I’m going to go back to bed so that I can wake up on time for work tomorrow morning.

Forgiveness means indifference. I will be there soon.

I got blasted by someone the other day (for no good reason. someone has some myth about things are, but it’s all just a bunch of crap), and so as a step toward making peace with this person I attempted to be helpful (genuine help, not a thinly veiled attempt to give them a shot back, but honest genuine help) and of course was blasted for my efforts.

Otherwise, they will trample them with their feet and then turn around and attack you

Movin on…movin on…

We were joined by a friend of hers. During the conversation it came out that he had been involved in the past with a girl from my school who gave me a lot of grief and bullied me. While I was able to turn the tables on her without violence but with psychological warfare, which made me realize at the tender age of 12 that I had a flair for the study of politics, history, and political psychology, I hated her for many reasons that are too complicated to talk about. As a matter of fact, when I meet people from my old school now, the first thing everyone remembers is that girl and how much we all despised her. Personally I never forgave her, but I am not a person who forgives….

Well, last night I learned she has had a horrible life. While successful in her profession, she has had a rough deal even at the time that she was a kid. And I was glad she did! Well, about everything except from one thing I wouldn’t wish to my worst enemy, and she has arguably been one of my worst enemies.

I don’t believe in God, and while raised Christian, I reject all that Christian stuff about turning the other cheek, forgiving, etc. I cannot understand why people forgive, and I was once very upset that one of my mentors, a Jew, decided to forgive his countrymen who tried to send him and his family to a concentration camp, and he barely escaped with his life to the US. Decades later, they invited him to honor him with some medal, and I couldn’t understand why he didn’t tell them to stick it up….. (you know the rest)...

Yet, I am not sure whether by being so relentless about forgiving is not hurting me in the long run… I really wish I could do that. But I wouldn’t really be doing it sincerely, so why pretend?

I wish I could remember when I first heard someone say, “Forgiveness is a gift that you give to yourself”.

There are few abolute truths in this life and the concept of gifting oneself peace by forgiving others is certainly one of those truths.

For YEARS I had a fist, a fist of anger clinched around my heart. Keeping me safe and others away.

There is a poem by Robert Bly that always comes to mind when I think of forgiveness. The entire poem is worth reading, but there is a line towards the end which caught me breathless the first time that I read it:

“He already had
his bark-like skin then,
made rough especially to repel the sympathy
he longed for, didn’t need, and wouldn’t accept”

My Father’s Wedding
by Roberty Bly

“Today, lonely for my father, I saw
a log, or branch,
long, bent, ragged, bark gone.
I felt lonely for my father when I saw it.
It was the log
that lay near my uncle’s old milk wagon.

Some men live with a limp they don’t hide,
stagger, or drag
a leg. Their sons often are angry.
Only recently I thought:
Doing what you want …
Is that like limping? Tracks of it show in sand.

Have you seen those giant bird-
men of Bhutan?
Men in bird masks, with pig noses, dancing,
teeth like a dog’s, sometimes
dancing on one bad leg!
They do what they want, the dog’s teeth say that.

But I grew up without dog’s teeth,
showed a whole body,
left only clear tracks in sand.
I learned to walk swiftly, easily,
no trace of a limp.
I even leaped a little. Guess where my defect is!

Then what? If a man, cautious,
hides his limp,
somebody has to limp it. Things
do it; the surroundings limp.
House walls get scars,
the car breaks down; matter, in drudgery, takes it up.

On my father’s wedding day,
no one was there
to hold him. Noble loneliness
held him. Since he never asked for pity
his friends thought he
was whole. Walking alone he could carry it.

He came in limping. It was a simple
wedding, three
or four people. The man in black,
lifting the book, called for order.
And the invisible bride
stepped forward, before his own bride.

He married the invisible bride, not his own.
In her left
breast she carried the three drops
that wound and kill. He already had
his bark-like skin then,
made rough especially to repel the sympathy

he longed for, didn’t need, and wouldn’t accept.
So the Bible’s
words are read. The man in black
speaks the sentence. When the service
is over, I hold him
in my arms for the first time and the last.

After that he was alone
and I was alone.
Few friends came; he invited few.
His two-story house he turned
into a forest,
where both he and I are the hunters.”

Forgive. Forgive. Forgive.