Twenty Years and Counting

20 years
and counting....
There is still pain.
There is still loss.
There are still repercussions in my life and that of my family.
Mostly, I have healed.
Then again, a memory surfaces,
a sense of loss returns,
a question of "What if?" arises, knowing there is no answer.
I've healed.
My family has healed.
We have moved beyond.
There are still scars.
There are still echoes of pain and trauma.
There are still moments calling me back to what we knew, what we lost.
There is no going back.
That's hard to say.
It's hard to write.
It's hard to accept that picking up what used to be will never come again.
Perhaps part of the difficulty to forgive is in letting go of what will never be again.
Conversely, forgiving would allow me to let go.
It would allow a fuller acceptance of living the new reality before me.
Do I want what I have?
Or do I really just want what used to be?
I've been moving toward forgiveness.
I've been moving ahead.
I've been engaging my newest reality.
Part of me still wants to cling to what I can never have again.
The larger part knows that ship has sailed.
Forgiveness is really just letting go, isn't it?
It's accepting water under the bridge.
It's not justifying it.
It's not embracing it with love and adoration.
It's just saying, "Here we are now. Let's work with what is."
If I can truly and completely forgive, it won't affect those who harmed me and mine.
What it will do is free me from the burden of what was done to me.
If they want the burden, they can claim it.
I don't need it anymore.
I never did.
In my better moments, I accepted and lived that.
At other times, I did not, or did so only in part.
"Father, forgive them..."
Father, forgive me for hanging on to what I should never have grasped.
Help me let go completely.
Help me live in the what is.
The world moved on.
That's OK.
It needs to.
So do I.


— ©Copyright 2022, Christopher B. Harbin 



http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/

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