“Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.” ― Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
It is easy to find examples of how you were/sre a victim. It sort of gives us an excuse for ‘whatever”. But, when we do that, we are giving away ur power. We cannot move forward as long as we are stuck with the reins of some past injustice. We lose that gentle flowing progression in life and end up with some chunky hard spots, some sharp edges, that keep us from rolling along like a well-smoothed stone. It affects us phsyically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually.
The divine Feminine in us wants to flow like the moves of Eve. When we have residual anger issues, we cannot flow. We are wafting lingering resntment wherever we go. When we hold grudges, we are hurting ourselves, perpetuating that “slight” over and over and over again and we fester. It colors everything we see, think, feel and believe. The injsutices we do to ourselves is way more damaging than the original injustice.
To deal with grudge-holding, we hae to, first, think better of ourselves, think better of those around us, and think better of the world. Huge Task! If you leave the grudge imprinting your whole life for very long, it gets harder and hard to remove that stain. It takes the “F”word.
We resent having to forgive over and over and over and over again. We get tired of it. We feel like a martyred Saint just thinking we hav to forgie another (insert a descriptive “F” word here), ahumpffff…’person of our disrespect’. It stiffens our spine, sets our teeth on edge, downright pmo. We hold grudges agains grudges and a huge grudge aginst forgiving people. We have a weigh scale about what is jsutice and what is ot and when it comes to our grudges, well, we weigh them heaviy. It becomes all about us. Except it should not be all about us in such a heavy way. We hurt ourselves over and over ad over again just thinking about hiow injsutice a certain person, palce, thing was. They key word is “WAS”. If I opacked around injsutices I perceived, prceive, I would have no room for joy, for adventure, for growth, for spirit to bloom in our lives. Somes we have to forgive ( never goret becuae forgetting aows more slights to begin to gnaw at peace). Some people are who they are…we can not let them color who WE are. We have to learn to, sometimes, just walk away.
I had a hard lesson in walking away a year or so ago. A huge ‘slight’, no, not slight, a sacrilege. I could have done what I always have done and tried to ‘fix it’, which has always, in the past, only made thngs worse. I could have dfended msyelf. But, then I looked at it differentkly, That person choose to be oiffended to deny something she could have nown was true, and what I had shared as a monumental thing in my life, that inlcuded her. Soimeone had shared something with me, out of concern for me, and circumstances has pointed to it being true. It was not ad I got past it, but I wanted to share how our friendship ha buffeted some wild winds, and it was like forty years ago, and I had long let that go. My love for her, I felt, had overcome what others had plantred. It was not taken so and the ensuing tornado of events began. She told two people and she told two people, and it was colored with her choice to take it negatively. There could be no stopping it and so I walked away from defending msyelf, from correcting her, from deep feelings of abandonment and rejection. It never was about the original incident. It became all about her resentment of me that had been long festering and never expressed until a hair broke the camel’s back. There was no discussion. It was a done deal. I coud let that what felt my betrayakl of her become her betrayal of me and never would the two be satistfied. It had been there all along and I had chosen not to see it. I voudl have beaten msyelf up forver for even mentioning it. But, it was an important juncture in my life. It helped me change everything about where my lfie was headed. I became a way better person for the change. I moved towards fulfilling my life’s destiny because I based a choice on the incident. The rmenants of half a life-long relationship was allowed to slip away. Sometimes we have to pick our battles. Sometimes forgiving is simply ‘letting it go” and getting on with life. Everything in us would do siffrently. We want to rub our scars raw, betimes. It doesn’t work, it does not help, it does not move us forward. Sometimes it is showing mercy to those we may feel are the least deserving. The intresting thing is, when we show mercy to others, we are really showing mercy to/for ourselves. That, my sisters, is huge.
To set aside grudges, we have to, for once, let it be all about US. What will make us most happy, peaceful, progressive? Soemtimes we need to take a new perspective on that which ‘slightest’ us. There is always a WHY behind a what. We all have issues. Sometimes we have to see that the other pson had/has issues, and try to understand they WHY of their issues. Another thing, just because you are willing to let it slide does not mean that we can ever reconcile with/or about the incident or the person. It is best to just let some quietly go out the door and not stop them. In their void comes important lessons. We can learn to be more intuitive so that incident, like the original, do not happen again. There are some things I will not do again beaue that ‘smarted’. The moment we forgive something, purely internally, purely with intent to let things go, to let things be, to let things/prsons walk away, we can wuietly shut the door to the incident and turn to make our lies better beause of it. This is your power. It takes the powr away from the grudge, the slight, the person(s) who may have hurt your once and never will again. There is satisfactoin, peace, to that. Seek that.
©Carol Desjarlais 3.26.22
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