Apologies and Forgiveness

Friday night was so horrible.  What was expected to be a wonderful night, sort of came crashing down.  I was an emotional mess, my friend was an emotional mess and train wrecks do happen.  As we parted, I texted, "I am sorry."

You have to understand that this was the very first apology of my life, ever!  I have never felt guilt, never felt shame, never felt remorse; I was a sociopath after all, and at two months and three weeks of being "normal", I got to discover all three of them in a split instant and apologized for real.

Saturday morning I had a presentation to attend for review on breakthroughs in acrylic polymers.  Yeah, I know, sounds like death to you, but it is the kind of thing I love to learn about and play with.  And it was a brain dump let me tell you!  That lady talked for 3.5 hours straight and left me wondering just how much was I able to get into my notes!
Of course, I was in such a mental state that I wrote three poems while waiting for the event to even start up!  It is hard to express resentment of your self in a poem.  sigh.

Sunday, 4 am I woke up and knew that death would be better.  I had my youngest grand-daughter's cold.  And I had even been super careful around her!  Being the product of too many royal lines, all merging, to create someone with no immune system anyone is aware of!  Someone sneezes, 200 miles away in Oregon, I will get it.

So, one endless Kleenex ride ever since.

Of course, I had a meeting on Monday, a time to be with my friend, to work on making Kris better, a time for prayer, and to apologize for Friday night again.  Sigh.

And God granted me my voice back and I thought, "Wow, I am beating this!"  But, no, my voice only returned for the duration of our visit.  A miracle, yeah, because He had something He wanted me to say.  To talk about the importance of forgiveness in our lives.

We all have areas in our lives where forgiveness is needed.

For me, my latest opportunity came when my daughter went so suddenly sideways.  I never was very angry with my new daughter, sure a little unhappy at the path she has chosen, but it stunned me to have figured out that I needed to forgive her mother.  She had played me, then she betrayed my daughter, for personal gain and I was stunned to learn this.  And I had to forgive her.  Yeah, but it is hard since she has chosen not to be a part of my life, since long before the disaster came.  I just figured she was being odd.  So I have added her daily to my prayers, a prayer for her to reconcile with me, in a different manner than new daughter.  But, reconcile she must and I just wait and watch for God to provide the opportunity.  He will, I am confident.

And just like me, my friend has been wronged in life and carried the burden of forgiveness.  Just like you and me, she needs to find out how to release that unforgiveness at the foot of the cross and not take possession of it again.  But it is hard to do.  When I figured out how I was played by my sister, oh I was hot!  It took me a spell to cool down and figure out that I had to forgive and abandon that anger in order to move forward.  I am glad I did because I honestly do love her and her daughter, but it will remain unreturned until we can reconcile.

So why did I need to talk with her about this?  Because, God told me I needed to address this and then painfully showed me why.  Then to drive home the point He brought two people into my life during the week, both with problems dealing with unforgiveness.  They both thought I was a genius since I had hit on their issues so quickly.  (well I am, but.....)  If God had not opened the window into Kris, then the issue would not have been unknown to me.  And they would not have walked away understanding how to free to themselves.

Yeah God is pretty awesome.  Show me I suck and how to deal with it, so that others can benefit from it.  Yeah, nothing like being an object lessons for others!