Debtors

When it comes to living as Jesus would, I like to pride myself on having the "forgive your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" command down pat. Who likes to carry around the heavy baggage of past hurts or remained chained to an enemy by harboring ill will? Not me...I like to think that I'm a forgiving person and begrudge no one. I like to keep peace. Forgive you? Absolutely...and let's move on.

Or so I like to think. Unfortunately there is one "debtor" in my life that I have a hard time forgiving. Ironically, this person, a former supervisor, doesn't even know (or probably even care) about the pain and damage inflicted on me over a period of 2+ years. In my anger, I saved hundreds of emails and documents "just in case" I would ever need them for "something", not sure what. I allowed myself to remain bitter and hurt towards this person, even though I prayed for it to go away, "Help me forgive him", etc. A few months ago this person left our agency and I took the time to delete all the emails, shred the documents, and finally give myself some closure. Goodbye, good riddance, I'm over it.

Or so I thought. Yesterday another former supervisor and I were talking about this person...and it brought all the feelings back to the surface. By the time I got home I was in tears and ended up on my knees (literally) crying out to God to "HELP ME!" to truly forgive, move past, get rid of the bitterness, etc. Such ugly feelings...I ended up a big sobbing mess until I began to meditate on, "It happened. It's over"...I just kept saying that over and over...and it brought me comfort. To just acknowledge events, words, digs, lies, etc. that took place...and accept that it is in the past. It was ME who kept dragging it along. When I was finished praying, I thanked God for the comfort, declared, "I will choose not to think about this anymore", and started to sing praise songs. Did I forgive this person? I like to think so...

In my quiet time this morning, I did some treasure hunting about forgiveness. The word Jesus used when he was speaking on forgiveness means "to send forth" in the Greek but the root word means "away" which usually denotes "separation, departure, cessation, and completion". Wow...and hmmm...

I really, REALLY hate the phrase, "I forgive but I never forget" or any variation of that. Although Jesus never said,"Forgive AND forget", I feel like that's exactly what he meant when he told us to forgive...to send forth the transgressions of others, depart from them, separate from them, leave them be and move away.  Which is exactly what I hadn't done...I kept running back to them...

I found a picture of my debtor online and tried to alter it to include it in this post. Either I'm not as savvy on this MAC as I'd like or else God said, "Uh uh", so I used the picture above. It's me, being a blockhead for continuing to harbor bitterness...but now as I better understand how to forgive, I'm going to choose to have this image in my mind:

Me, walking away from "all that"...It happened. It's over. I will choose to continue to separate, depart, cease, and eventually complete the whole lot. May those of you who ask harbor bitterness learn to do the same.