I've been trying to get down to the heart of the matter, but my will gets weak and my thoughts seem to scatter, but I think it's about forgiveness, forgiveness, even if, even if you don't love me anymore. - Don Henley, The Heart of the Matter
Ever since Father's Day, there's been thoughts or ideas bouncing around in my head, that I've been trying to get to gel, but as noted, my head's kind of stuffed with fluff, so they've continued to bounce around with no cohesion to them. I think they may have finally come together last night after a late night talk with Sean, but I'll get there in a minute.
Right around Father's Day, one of my colleague's who I respect immensely, Jim Zielinski, asked me a question. "What one piece of advice would you give on raising children?" He has young twin boys, I think about five, and I'm at the tail end of raising ours, our twin boys are 18. My one piece of advice was learn to bite your tongue, learn when to keep your mouth shut. As my older, and much wiser, brother once told me, words are like bullets, once they're out, you can't get them back and they've done irreparable damage.
On Father's Day at our church, Dr. Chappell did a sermon in a sense on the same topic. His sermon was the positive side of this, he told a couple of stories, one from his childhood and one from his parenthood. I won't tell these stories, these are Dr. Chappell's life stories, and that wouldn't be fair. In each case, however, the father encountered a situation where the son made a fairly big mistake, and in each case, rather than yelling or telling the son how he had erred, the father simply hugged his son and let him know he was loved no matter what.
Ah, I wish my story was as positive to tell. There have been many times when I haven't taken my own advice and just kept my big mouth shut unfortunately. There is one that sticks with me and still haunts me, I don't know why, but it does. It was probably two years ago or so, and Sean was playing indoor soccer. He wasn't having a particularly good game, but the main purpose of the indoor season was to get in shape for the high school season. After the game, as we were leaving, I couldn't help but comment on Sean's lackluster play. Now Sean is a pretty competitive young man, and he's also very astute. He knew he hadn't played his best game, and the last thing he really needed was for his father to be telling him that he hadn't played that well. Bang! There goes the handgun blast, there goes the bullet ripping through Sean's heart. I must have said I was sorry a dozen times on the drive home that night, but it still didn't help. The shot was fired, the bullet did its damage, no amount of words could repair the wound.
The funny thing that kept gnawing at me though when I kept thinking back to this evening was that there was a second shot, much more damaging than the first. It was more of a shotgun blast, a self-inflicted wound, and the damage was so extensive, it still really hasn't healed. I think, or I hope, that if you would ask Sean if he remembered this incident, I'd venture to say he doesn't, that bullet to the heart has healed over. There's still some scar tissue maybe, but for the most part, he's healed. Unfortunately, the self-inflicted shotgun blast I took to the heart still hasn't healed, and I guess, that is the heart of the matter.
We've been talking a lot about forgiveness at our house lately, mainly dealing with other people, those who have wronged us, and how no matter what, we need to forgive those who have committed wrongs against us. The hardest wrong to forgive though are those that you do yourself. As much as I know I should, and need to, forgive myself for that night, or so many of the other days or nights where I've done something stupid like this, I still struggle with it. Words are like bullets, they can inflict so much damage, but so many times, the damage to oneself lingers far longer than the damage to others. Which brings me to late last night and my conversation with Sean.
For those of you who do read my blog, I refer back to my post of December 24, 2009, Does God Talk To Us - Or Through Us? Sean came to talk to me last night because that night has really stuck with him (maybe that shoots my theory of bullet wounds healing, or maybe that bullet wound was just too deep). Sean unfortunately witnessed me losing it with Laurel that night, and he told me last night that while he knows I won't leave them, and maybe it's a little irrational, he still has this fear that I will leave them because of what he witnessed that evening. While I still suffer the bullet wounds from that night myself, I didn't realize that those wounds were still there for Sean, which led to a great parenting opportunity for me, and maybe even a little reparation of those wounds to try to get them to heal within me.
I told Sean that I still regret that night and what I said and did. I told him that forgiveness is critical in our lives, and probably the hardest person to forgive is ourselves. I told him that even though I know that, and I know I need to forgive myself, I still haven't been able to do it. I told him that while I regret what happened, life and marriage involves hurting each other sometimes, and the most important thing is to recover from those moments. Even though you may fight or disagree, it doesn't mean that you still don't love each other. I told him that I can't change the past, but events like this make me try to make every day a better day for his Mom if I can. And I told him, in my or our defense, we've been married for over 28 years, which is pretty good considering the average divorce rate, so we must be doing something right.
As we come full circle to that evening, I come back to the e-mail that Sean wrote me that night, admonishing me to do the right thing. He gave the analogy of Judas and Peter, committing wrongs and how you react or deal with those wrongs. Do you take the route of Judas, commit the wrong, not forgive yourself, and commit suicide? Or do you take the route of Peter, commit the wrong, but forgive yourself and run after Jesus even faster? While the answer seems easy, the path isn't as smooth. So we come to the heart of the matter. Can I forgive myself, can I be Peter, can I put the past behind me and soar confidently into the future? As Hamlet said, "Ay, there's the rub!". As is probably painfully obvious from reading this, self-forgiveness is still a struggle I have. In my mind, in my heart, I know I have to, it is the only healthy thing to do, but I can't seem to pull the trigger, or at least pull the trigger as well as I pull the trigger on those bullets of criticism or anger.
So I wish I could give you a happy Father's Day ending to this, but I really can't. What I can give you is the hope that I have for myself, and of course, for anyone who struggles with forgiving himself or herself. This one I listen to a lot, and I think about a lot, because to me, it does have a lot of meaning, particularly for me. I continue to be a work in progress, and I hope that I am until the day that I die.
There is hope for me yet, Because God won't forget, All the plans he's made for me, I have to wait and see, He's not finished with me yet, He's not finished with me
Brandon Heath, Wait and See
