Forgiveness is a pathway with a thousand bolted doors.
-Sandra McCracken
The bullet gray clouds of winter urged me to stay inside one quiet Saturday morning just over a year ago, and with the earnest desire for warmth on a cold day it pleased me to accept, steaming cup of coffee in hand. Sitting in the wingback reading chair in my living room, I’d been working through some theological reflections in a book by Rose Marie Miller, titled From Fear to Freedom: Living as Sons and Daughters of God. I realized while reading this book that I still had layers of unforgiveness that I thought I’d worked through, but clearly hadn’t. I’d unlock one bolted door, as Sandra McCracken calls it, only to come to another, and another, thinking to my frustrated self, “I thought I worked through this already!” Each time the pain or the fear to which the unforgiveness had attached itself would rear its loveless head. I recognized how it affected my relationships by preventing me from trusting, and also how it short-changed the complete work of grace in me. Having received grace upon grace, I needed to extend forgiveness upon forgiveness. The realization struck me, surely and deliberately, though at the same time innocuously, like a good-willed six-year-old wearing over-sized boxing gloves, whose hit was kind, but clear spiritual therapy.
Miller quotes her friend James, saying, “Do you forgive with your heart, your memory, your body?” She adds, “Forgiveness of others has to be a total thing.” It was then I decided I had to do something—tangibly—to deal with the wounds that were still there ticking away, even quietly most days. I had forgiven considerably in my heart, but my mind kept going back to what was said and done. I had to release the memories, and I had to do it not just in my mind, but also with my hands.
I grabbed a notebook and pen and started writing down each thing as it came to me. Each word, each action, each sinking feeling that surfaced. My thoughts flowed through fingers, ink, and script. I filled up three pages. I knelt, I wept, and I prayed out loud over each line: “I forgive ____ for ____.” And then I placed those pages in the fireplace. Striking a match with the flip of a wrist, I reached forward with the light. The paper caught, and I felt the warmth of the fire briefly strengthen upon my chest. I witnessed with my eyes the quick shriveling up and turning to light-as-air ash. To my surprise, I found I was capable of forgiving with my heart, my memory, and yes, even my body. It made this forgiveness a total thing. It’s amazing to me that today, a year later, I have no recollection of the actual words or specific wounds I wrote on those papers!
My pastors say that in order to have healthy relationships, we have to dig up our landmines so that they don’t explode on other people. In other words, we have to deal with our stuff. The last thing you want is collateral damage. So, you do the work. You carefully, with precision, locate and excavate the landmines.
Kneeling before God on my living room floor that morning, I found a way to dig up my landmines. But instead of future craters, I now had cavities left behind—holes in the ground where the wounds once dwelled. I knew something more had to happen. Because true healing is restorative, I asked God to fill up all the empty places. No craters, no cavities—only God’s infilling. This is the better holy ground: where God meets me—where I am transformed and the land is restored to wholeness, peace, that promised shalom.
“Arriving at a place of healing and forgiveness, whether it be toward others or ourselves or both, brings this weepless peace. When I no longer feel the familiar pang of a past hurt, or when I search my heart but find that the spark of long-smoldering anger has been truly extinguished, I feel the drying of my eyes as though by some divine hand: a personal brush of my cheek that sweeps all the way to my soul. I breathe more deeply; the band around my heart has been loosed. And this small but mighty restoration, I wonder, must be a foretaste of life in the resurrected spiritual body. Like hearing my name called intimately by a nearby gardener who transforms before my very eyes into the living God, and who then sweeps me up as well in the transformation.”
— Carolyn Weber, Holy is the Day: Living in the Gift of the Present
Oh, my restoring heart.
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been poring through the Old Testament book of 2nd Kings. In chapter 3, the kings of Israel, Judah, and Edom went out into the desert to fight against Moab, and they inquired of the prophet Elisha about what the Lord would have them to do. Elisha declared, “This is what the Lord says: Make this valley full of ditches. For this is what the Lord says: You will see neither wind nor rain, yet this valley will be filled with water, and you, your cattle, and your other animals will drink. This is an easy thing in the eyes of the Lord; he will also hand Moab over to you.”
I love it when the original language in the Bible uses the same word repetitively. Though I don’t know all of the Hebrew and Greek grammar rules, the nuance of the text in these moments seems to whisper to me, “Pay attention here.” For instance, Isaiah 26:3 uses the phrase shalom shalom, translated “perfect peace.” God calls himself hayah asher hayah, “I Am that I Am” in Exodus 3:14. So here, in 2 Kings 3:16, God tells them to make gebim gebim. After they dug these “ditches and ditches” in the desert, the Bible tells us they saw water flowing from the direction of Edom, and the ditches they dug were filled! As promised, the men and animals were refreshed and the Lord gave them victory in battle.
Seeking restoration may feel like thirsting in a desert. Forgiveness may feel impossible. It may look like kneeling, weeping, and burning away the past, or like back-breaking, getting-your-hands-dirty, in-the-trenches work. But in doing so, we get to partner with God in the work He’s begun in us. “Forgive as the Lord forgave you,” He tells me. And when I do, He reminds me that from Him is fullness, abundance, and overflowing; rivers flow from His throne to give life on every side, to bring healing not just to me, but to the world. For health, and healing, and victory, and freedom are given in Christ, “who fills everything in every way” (Eph. 1:23), that is, panta en pasin pléroumenou: “all in all filling.”
Pay attention here—
Ditches and ditches, all in all filled by I Am that I Am, perfect peace. I feel it now.
There’s an infilling happening as love satisfies the empty places left behind and wells begin to spring up in this bright, new land.
