About a year ago, maybe two, during a random moment of attention during a church service, I heard the preacher speak about forgiveness. He said that we didn't have to forget the wound or hut administered by another, but we did have to forgive them. And at that moment, I felt a little better. It made sense to me that if someone really hurt me, that I might be able to let go of the anger, the hurt and bitterness of the hurt, but I didn't have it in me to let bygones be bygones and to befriend that person again. I mean, seriously, I'd have to be stupid and a glutton for punishment (and despite my current dedication to minimal participation in gym memberhsip....I am neither). So I felt better that I could say, I forgive you for the hurt, but I don't have to have you in my life. I don't have to forget you hurt me. But I won't let the hurt you issued have any more power over my life.
In the past couple of weeks, I have learned that I never really knew how to forgive until I became a parent, and specifically a parent of a teenager. As I grew up, and someone hurt my feelings, then I was grumpy with them. I wished bad things would happen to them. I replayed vicious fantasies that somehow resulted in their demise and my triumph. And though I might verbally declare that I didn't care, and that it didn't matter to me; secretly (and not always so secretly) I would wish for retribution.
Now that I'm 40, I find that I can say, I don't really care and it doesn't really matter to me. I don't know if that's because I see with greater perspective than I did when I was younger. Or perhaps the universe has taught me that I don't have to dream of retribution, it will come all by itself (and what Karma doesn't take care of 2012 will). But I think that perhaps I've learned how to forgive better because of my children.
Never in my life have I had greater hopes and higher aspirations than I have for my kids. I want their life to be better than mine was...to be easier somehow. And as those with parents of older children, or any children, know what I want doesn't come into a child's life plan very much. And there are times when the child you have worried over, sweated over, cried over... that child that you labored to deliver into this world, clothed, fed, protected... that child will hurt your feelings. There will be a time when you are not cool, not wanted, not right. You will not know everything, you won't know anything. You won't be the one with the answers, you'll be the one that doesn't understand and who doesn't know anything. Yours won't be the arms they run to when they're hurt, but the clutches they run from. They will lie to you, deceive you, say bad things about you to their friends and to your face. In short, they will rip through your heart with tiny little scissors that drip an alcohol salt water mix. You will be angry, hurt, upset, worried, anxious, hopeful, disappointed, frustrated, sad, and every other emotion you could think to experience. No one will make you feel more incompetent than your child. Nor will anyone make you feel more angry. No one will hurt you more. But then, there comes that moment, when the planets align, and that same child comes to you and says they love you. And you let all of it go, open your arms, and you forgive.
Then, if my own experience is true for most, you jump right back on that roller coaster and do it all over again, because who are we kidding, they're kids and have not yet learned how to tell their left buttock from a piece of bologna. But at least, they get to start again with a clean slate (though to be honest, Franklin's still has enough smudges that I can read the stupid stuff he's already done). It's there but washed away somehow - thus insuring that you don't murder them today, maybe tomorrow...when they drive their car past two road closed signs, watch a F150 drive through the water and think their little coupe can make it too, then refuse to actually actively work towards the repair of the car....all the while logging onto the internet with a virus infected laptop without permission.... ahhhh... to forgive is divine.
