Forgiveness

I live within the confines of our society...and that looks truly normal and good and right. Yet when I look deep within and hear the entitlement, the anger, the voices that seek to exalt me rather than bring me to a place of service to others, I know that the way I live is actually not the Way I claim to have chosen. These words from my friend, Ali, are powerful to me today:

"I’ve been reading about unforgiveness recently and a week or so ago I was walking home from school carrying some hummus and cucumbers for dinner, talking to Daddy about the day, and he reminded me about the post I wrote last month  (“Storytime”).  He whispered in his gentle, kind, strong way of love that what I was feeling/what I wrote about wasn’t only due to being tired and ready for a break, that I just don’t “click” with Jordan and am called somewhere else, the fault of Arab men, or that those walls that I’ve gotten so good at putting up in my heart are just necessary for single foreign women living in this part of the world…but that actually, bitterness and anger and hatred towards Arabs and towards Arab men in particular were growing in me as a direct result of my unforgiveness towards them.  He showed me that in big and little ways all thru these past 1.5 yrs I’d been holding onto wrongs done against me, growing more guarded and critical, when his way in reality is just the opposite.  He calls us to forgive and to bless to leave the rest up to him.

Man ALIVE talk about conviction and truth.  I asked his forgiveness which I know I already have…and then we talked about how it looks for me to live differently here, like Jesus would if he were me.  I felt like he was asking me to CHOOSE to immediately extend forgiveness after a wrong done against me and to follow it with specific blessing upon that person (for their family, work, future, rela’ship with God, etc).  So in the days following, I started doing it…to the guy who looked me up and down and made a comment as he passed me on the street, to the taxi driver who tried to rip me off and the kids on the street barking into my window just to hear the dog bark back at them…and seriously it’s totally changed me.  I feel like I’ve seen more smiles and acts of kindness and beauty around me in the last week than I have in the last YEAR just bc I have the EYES to see them again!  And this deep real LOVE for Arabs that so isn’t me but HIM is just bubbling up in place of the bitterness and anger.  It’s AMAZING!  It’s indeed so so true that WE are the victims when we choose not to forgive those who have wronged us."