Next week is my friend, Stacey's birthday. She has brought so much joy into my life and she has taught me a lot about the attitude in which to live it. This lesson has been very important to me because I had been living my life from a very different perspective than joy and love. A few months before I met her, I went through a very transformative time, and coming out of it, I realize now that in addition to the many other gifts her life has brought me, teaching me to focus on joy and live out love has been one of the most important.
I have learned that in each of our lives there is pain. It comes from different places and expresses itself in different ways, but in everyone's life, it's there, underneath the surface, ready to jump out at different times. The way I see it, we have a choice. We can't go back and take away the pain, the past cannot be changed. What happened may or may not have been our fault. We may have been victimized, we may have been the persecutor, we may have been the one with our heart broken because someone we love was hurt. We may have been all three. Either way, the past cannot be changed. What can be changed is our future. Are you going to let the pain of the past dictate your future? Are you going to let the one who hurt you have such a hold on your life that you choose to let them be a continual shadow blocking out some of the sunlight on your face? By not forgiving, by holding onto your hate, by living your life according to what has happened in times past, that is exactly what you are doing. Yes, when they hurt you, you did not have a choice. But now it is past and whatever hurt is still in your life, that choice is entirely yours. Harsh but true. I wish I could say forgiving is easy. It's not. It's not even an either/or, black or white choice. Forgiveness is a journey. But as you make the journey, you learn to see things you never thought you would. And as you go, the chains surrounding you fall away.
In Quakerism, there are questions called, "Queries": questions for you to think about. Here are a few of my own for you.
-When you think of someone who hurt you, how do you speak about them, think of them, treat them?
-How does God see this person?
-Why are you holding on to you anger? What purpose is it serving in your life now? (If it wasn't serving a purpose, you wouldn't be holding onto it.)
-Imagine your life without this anger. What does it look like?
-What gifts are in the pain?
Thanks Stacey, among others, for teaching by example.