Sticks and stones...

...wouldn't it be nice if we really believed this child hood quip? I know I've reached deep into my mental closets to try to find something that would make me the invulnerable woman! I also know, that this isn't possible. If anything, we as human beings that live, breathe, and think entirely too much, aren't resilient to words and actions. We're fairly porous, and absorb most anything thrown at us or done to us, and how we react to those moments (people?) tend to define how we live our every day lives. (Not to mention how we handle our relationships!)

I heard in a great sermon locally once, that forgiveness doesn't involve forgetting. Forgiveness is a healing process for YOU, and even may be for the other person involved, but you don't have to forget. I always fail to remember this, and I continually find myself disappointed by the conditions of real life relationships. Human, fallible, and conditional relationships. Why is it so hard to learn to absorb some of the damaging shrapnel that is thrown my way? Because I'm human, fallible, and come with conditions, too.

I keep waking up as this woman that assumes her disappointment in God and her relationship with Him is completely due to this failure to forgive and forget. Not just others, but herself as well. In all of this, I face these daily challenges-no, battles-that do not allow me to move past the forgiveness stage because I continually try to FORGET. I forget, and I'm disappointed when it happens again, it's brought up again, I think about it again, or I'm yet again failed or failing in someway.

Forgiveness isn't a lesson titled Memory Erasing 101, nor is it some tonic taken to put those incidences and words in some secret Pandora's box. (But wouldn't either of those be nice to have available in this life?) Instead, I'm trying to remember it's a lesson in learning from what happened. You can't change people. I can change, but I can't expect others to change as a condition of my forgiving. The same thing may happen again, and this time-you'll be prepared. I'll be prepared. Because I can change.

Why be disappointed all of the time? Why live life continuously pulling knives out of your back, and, who am I kidding, your heart? Expectations aren't always met. Reality is that we all fall short. I suppose I either learn to live with it, stop rubbing salt in the wounds, and hope that my voiced expectations may be met. At least halfway. And if they aren't, I won't be too disappointed. This is just a pit stop before my last dot on the map, anyway, and that, my friends, will be the rest that I look forward to with great expectation.