I love http://wordle.net. When I first wrote this post a while back, I was too raw and fearful to actually post it.  Thus, the “wordle” seemed a way I could express the anguish I was feeling as my own sinful, black heart was nakedly revealed, without actually exposing the situation.  The post has languished in the drafts folder for some time and though I still love the Wordle representation, I believe the original journal-type post has something valuable to say, reminding me to forgive and forgive and forgive, for I need so much forgiveness myself.  So, both are here: the Wordle and the words that poured from me in repentance.

I am surprised to discover that embracing offense (becoming “offended”) is often (always?) worse than whatever the original mis-deed was…That I am responsible for my reaction.

I am forgiving you.  I am.

I am forgiving you even though you don’t even know I need to because you don’t know what I know, that even I know.  But I know too much and yet I have cancelled any and all of your guilt by running after offense to claim as some sort of sick-prize.  I owe YOU forgiveness.  I do.

I won’t come to you and tell you what you did that ripped my heart.    We are fine publicly, but the veil-of-innocent-trust has been ripped and I cannot deny my own guilt in it.  

I didn’t want to know, yet, against all good judgement, I craved the knowledge that would cut-so-deep.    I was both torn and tantalized by learning about things said, betrayals set on course.   I felt rejected and disappointed in your lack of loyalty, and oddly justified for not trusting you in the first place.   I have blamed you and raged against you in the hallways of my heart.   I have felt sorry for myself and built walls of protection when you come near.   I have been party to the devastation, fallen prey to the enemy’s destroying work, relished in self-pity, allowed small darts of offense to fester and ooze and become infectious, contaminating the beauty that once was, and tainting the atmosphere of blessing in my life with a sure-death-march toward a hardened bitterness.  

If I really cared about our relationship, I have asked myself, why wouldn’t I come to you to mend it?   Various reasons, I suppose.   Choose one: fear-of-man?  Absolutely.  Lack-of-love?  Almost certainly.  Was it a  fear  our relationship  wouldn’t hold up anyway under the scrutiny?  Probably.   And because I-am-guilty.   I am condemned by my own true lack of love for you.   My motivations, if I examine them closely, are about self-preservation, protecting my reputation, my agenda.  They are about pretending to take the high road by not having done to you what you did to me, yet, doesn’t that just make me a self-centered, self-protecting “martyr” in the unworthy and ridiculous cause  of self?

You may have done a wrong thing, but I magnified it by receiving it fully into my heart, picking up the offense and claiming it as mine ~ my own pride and joy, my ” See? -I-have-been-wronged” trophy.  So I wronged you more.  My guilt is greater. 

I repent.  I am forgiving you because my offense  (of being offended) is now killing us both.

Mark 11.25 “And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”