I wasn’t supposed to know. I wasn’t supposed to find out. They were words said about me in confidence—the speaker’s tongue in cheek, the sarcasm as wide as the ocean over which we moved more than five years ago now. I had made the mistake of being vulnerable only to have it thrown back in my face—only it wasn’t thrown back into my face but lobbed underhandedly to someone else when I wasn’t within earshot, and that other person was smiling, too, like a child enjoying forbidden chocolate before supper.
But there were other ears present, ears that understood the warping effect one’s tone can have on one’s actual words, and the report made it back to me. I hadn’t asked to be told. I wish I didn’t know. But I do. And I admit it hurts.
If they were my enemies, it would make perfect sense. I wouldn’t like it, but I would get it. But when it comes from the lips of a person who says he loves you, who says she prays for you, and so you naïvely think you can open up only to find your hurting heart met with snarky jabs sharper than new barbed wire—well, that’s incomprehensible.
But I’m not supposed to know. And, not wanting to cause harm to the ears that heard and the lips that shared what those ears heard, I find my options limited. I, for one, open my laptop. I harness the emotions, channel them through my fingers, and turn them into my slave. Like one of pharaoh’s taskmasters over the children of Israel, I break the will and back of the hurt until it does my bidding and builds my phrases and sentences and paragraphs exactly as I want them to stand, and before me rises a testament, a monument in prose, to a careless, thoughtless word flung out into the world in secret, a word I wasn’t supposed to hear, a word I wasn’t supposed to find out about, a word that wasn’t supposed to float in my direction but eventually did.
Then I realize that even taskmasters have bosses, and a taskmaster much greater than I bends down—way, way down—and whispers, “Who are you to judge the servant of another?”
And I bow.
And so I go to work remodeling my monument into one commemorating not the hurt but the forgiveness I know has been so lavishly poured out on me. I was bought with a price. Would I not be amiss to try and shimmy out of the light and easy yoke of my master, a yoke called forgiveness even as I am forgiven?
So I forgive your careless words, words that I admit still sting even now, but love covers a multitude of sins, sins like mine, sins like yours. So today I won’t let bitterness have the final word. Instead I’ll pray for you as I hope you’ll pray for me. I’ll pray that we both will be much more careful with that little member that James reminds us can set fire to the entire course of life and is set on fire by hell itself. I’ll pray that our words and our tone build up instead of tear down. And I’ll pray that forgiveness tastes as sweet flowing out-bound as it does flowing in-bound.
May God have mercy on us both. I know I’m desperate for it. I long for nothing less than the same for you.
Hey Eric, this piece was very timely for me, having just had a difficult work encounter with a boss who is, at times, exceedingly unprofessional in her demeanor toward staff. You characterize forgiveness as part of the “yoke” we are to bear – an “easy” yoke according to Jesus (as compared to the yoke of anger, hatred, or unforgiveness I suppose). I like that. As a child I was taught that justification meant “just as if I had never sinned” but today I find myself applying this phrase to forgiving my boss – just as if she had never offended me. That re-framing of the incident is empowering. I think I’ll try to more often view the “difficult” requirements of Jesus as simply part of the yoke we are to bear – reminding myself that His yoke is easy, and His burden is light. Thanks again!
~ Don Donaldson
What a testament of the gospel far surpassing some abstract, philosophical idea and not merely entering into a person’s life but radically redefining that person’s life. Thank you for your witness to the power of God’s grace actively at work in the heart of one who has been touched by divine love and cannot help but extend it to others around him. Grace and peace to you, Don!