Edited: Forgiveness

On the Onerous act of Forgiveness...

                                                                                The weak can never forgive.      

        Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong. 

      - Mahatma Gandhi

God spoke to me in church last Sunday. At about the time, the priest preached a Homily I have since forgotten. HIS voice came into my heart with an alarming request.  HE asked me to reach out to the fathers of my children. This is probably the toughest thing I will have to do this year.  I am a child that obeys God, so I set forth doing this task the way I begin any task, by thinking excessively about it. 

I concluded that since my older son is 11 years old and has his own phone and e-mail address, all I had to do was talk to him about it. The decision to proceed and communicate his dad would be up to him.  I gave him his dad’s e-mail address should he choose to proceed.  He sent the e-mail, got a reply with a phone number, which he will probably call.  Done!

The thinking phase for my younger son continued until last night when I resolved to send an e-mail to his dad.  I have been reading Dale Carnegie’s How to win Friends & Influence People and I thought it would be a good way to practice some of my learning.  Even with all the great tips from Dale Carnegie, it was hard to find the right words to get across to someone who seemed to disagree with me in every way imaginable.  Drafting my e-mail was an arduous task. Even more daunting is the wait for a response.  Have I opened an old wound to have salt drizzled on it? Now I wait….

I have tears in my eyes this morning over an event years past. I cry as I read hurtful e-mails a ‘friend’ sent to me. I have decided to send a reconciliatory e-mail. To forgive someone is one of the hardest things to do.  Even if the person repents and pleads your forgiveness, it will still be difficult if the person offended you. But to forgive a person who hurt you without them asking for forgiveness is an immense feat.

Why are human beings so hurtful?  What did I ever do to deserve such affront?  Do I have to be the one to reach out considering ‘he/she’ was the one that hurt me?  They should beg for my forgiveness.  Why is being a Christian so difficult? They hurt me, why can’t God make them come to their senses and ask me for forgiveness?  Do I deserve the humiliation of reaching out to them?  My questions become more existential.  Why did God make me a woman?  A distressed, unappreciated, emotional woman. Silent tears become a noiseless wail as emotions get the best of me.

This year’s Easter has brought forgiveness into my heart in all sorts of ways.  For instance, a friendship that ended two years ago in a very bitter argument and separation—far worse than anything I experienced in my teenage dramatic years—was recently regenerated due to no deed of mine.  I got a message from my friend on LinkedIn, not an “I am sorry” message unfortunately J, but a simple message asking to reconnect.  After thanking God, I responded and in a few days I may be seeing a good old friend for the first time a long time. And meeting I get to ‘his/her’ their one year old daughter for the first time. 

NB:  If you have an old friend or a family member who greatly hurt you and you would like to make peace with, even if it is not for your own sake but for God’s sake or the sake of something besides you like your child, your family, etc.  Please contact me and I would be happy to share my e-mail and some of the great things I have learned along the way.

Cheers!

God Bless

Love & Marriage: Why Men Need More Relationship Advice

Love and faithfulness keep a king safe; through love his throne is made secure. Proverbs 20:28 

Last month I went to Baton Rouge, Louisiana and spent time with some good friends I hadn’t seen in a while.  I inquired about mutual friends and acquaintances; you know how these reunions go.  I was quite saddened by the news that a couple I admired got divorced.  “A nasty divorce”, is the way my friend put it. She went on to narrate that “the wife turned the kids against him” in a bitter separation and custody battle. 

This story connected in my brain with something another friend told me about his ex-wife.  He said they didn’t have a good relationship because she is so antagonistic and even tried to get full custody of the kids during their divorce with all sorts of claims on how he physically abused the kids. 

One thing is certain; divorce hurts both men and women.  A divorced man shrinks his disposable income, sometimes pretty drastically, and whether he believes it or not, being divorced carry a scar that could reduce or eliminate his chances of marrying a girl he meets down the line.  Lastly, the emotional scars of a bungled marriage also lodges in the heart of men as it does women.

Considering these reasons, men need more marriage and relationship advice if we are to improve the quality of today’s marriages and lower divorce rates.  Women are an over advised group.  Every corner you turn, on the Internet, in church, in magazines on radio, or TV women are assailed with advice.  This has made for a generation of women who are much better prepared for marriage relationships than their male counterparts and as we all know it takes two.

I have two sons, three brothers, and lots of male cousins, friends and even ex-boyfriends that could benefit from relationship advice so here goes….

On the issue that women never forgets.  I agree that women hold unto hurts more than men just as I agree that men are more childlike than women and I don’t say this in a supercilious way.  This art of being artless is one that is wordy of emulation as a Christian, and one that my mother insists will see more cheating husbands in heaven than their unforgiving pious wives.  That is a story for another day. 

Dearest men folk, women never forget because men never apologize.   Hurting a woman’s feelings and saying let us get past this is not a good way to preserve a healthy relationship.  Women need to hear “I am sorry”, we may even need to see “I am sorry”.  It is easier to truly forgive someone and forget the hurt they caused you when you believe they are sorry for hurting you.  Believe it or not this is also applicable to our relationships with our fellow women.

I have heard a lot of men say, “I didn’t mean to hurt you”, not the same as “I am sorry for hurting you”.  It doesn’t matter if there was intent to hurt or not.  What matters is that the one you love and made your wife is hurt and you should apologize sincerely and truly try to do better in that sphere.

I hope that you guys find this piece of advice useful.  I would love to hear your comments.

Cheers

God Bless!