Forgiveness...It's Not Just A Trend; It's a Way of Life (That I Suck At).

My drive-time is very often my alone time with God...that, and that awesome twilight that I have as I kind of pray myself to sleep. Of course, that drive-time is often interrupted with what I've come to call "Vehicular Tourette's" (translation: My prayers are frequently sidelined by my tendency to verbally overreact to approaching vehicles, whether or not I'm in the driver's seat), but I always try to bring it all back around. I thought this was totally abnormal, until I realized that since the God I know sees me in all of my various stages of maturity, He can handle me when I'm almost rear-ended by that moron in the SUV who just HAD to fix her makeup when my light turned red (God's heard my diatribe on women who drive vehicles larger than they can handle...and so have most of my friends, readers, and random patients who had the misfortune to ask). As I recently said (to my chagrin) to a church full of people, "God likes me, even when I've gone nuclear on my curling iron). He's God.
I'm not.
The graciousness of this realization is continuously amazing.
As I'm driving to work this morning, it dawned on me that my "spring break" has thrown me off of my pattern, so I started to pray. I found myself at a loss for words, and since a recent sermon @SG reminded me of a past place in my prayer life, I took it back to the basics of Matthew 6--The Lord's Prayer.
There was a time in my life where I could not pray, at all. I had nothing in my heart to say to God--I couldn't bring myself to trust Him with my prayers, since they'd all seemed to have fallen on deaf ears. Because I knew I HAD to pray, every single day, all I said was the "Our Father." There were days when it was the cry of my heart; there were days when it was mere recitation. There were many (MANY) days where I said it with the sole resolution that I'd say it 'til I meant it, even if it was the last prayer I prayed. It's short, sweet, and to the point, and really, it can be prayed in 30 seconds or less.
Imagine how many times that can be repeated in a 30 minute drive to work.
And back.
For 2 years.
The more I pray that prayer, though, the more I fall in love with it's complexities...with it's simplicities...with it's poetry and focus. Every time I pray The Lord's Prayer, it steels my resolve.
I could take it line by line, and break it all down, but that blog would take a while to write. This morning, I was struck by the phrase "Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us."
I stopped praying.
It has recently come to my attention that I have a real issue with forgiveness--one that goes past being raised by an Italian father and his love of the revenge of Chuck Norris. I most definitely have some anger issues, and I have a true desire to see certain people get what I just KNOW is coming to them. Once someone is on my bad side, fahgeddaboutit. They're done. Somehow, the innocence of childhood (where my mom used to say I was the most forgiving person in the world) has been mucked over by a real bitch with a nasty right hook. I can be so stinking vicious!!! There are certain family members, coworkers, people who hated my dress, that will never know how truly angry I am with them; I lie to myself, and say that just because I've never really let them have it, that I've forgiven them, and it's all handled. Then, I lie awake at night, and think of all of the "zingers" I could have zapped them with, to make my point. Underneath it all, of course, is true hurt that I have to give to Jesus and let go. I'd rather stay mad and bitter, than forgive them, break off the muck, and get the hurt healed.
Is this the true nature of the human condition, in regards to forgiveness? Or am I alone in this?
As I was praying this phrase, "forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us," I stopped, and said, "Dear God, I hope not, because I suck at forgiveness!!!! If You forgive me, according to how I've forgiven other people, then I'm so totally screwed!!!"
I hold on to past hurts and issues so tightly, even though I know there's freedom at the cross. To forgive someone, to truly let it go--I'm not sure I even begin to know how to do that. Do you just stop talking about it (even to yourself), or is that bottling it up? Do you write one of those disposable letters that you burn and never send (that would be SO unfulfilling to me)? We lay things on an altar to give to Him, yet our hands are curled so closely around them that our fingers get burnt in the offering. Or, we let our "living sacrifices" crawl off of said altar and onto our backs to weigh us down another day.
There is freedom in forgiveness. The last thing I want to hear is someone I know tell someone else that "Cassidy has a problem with forgiveness," even though it was said in jest. That truly cut me to the quick, and made me wonder how much of that statement is true? More than I'd care to admit...but if you told me about it, I'd just stay mad at you. :)
I have been forgiven for so much...God is so much bigger than me, so much bigger than my sin, than my offense; who am I, to withhold forgiveness from anyone?
Forgiveness...
Just one more reason why I'm so thankful that God is God, and that Jesus came...and tomorrow is one more day toward learning to be like Him.

Goodnight, Sweetheart...

It's almost 4-o'clock in the morning. What. The. Heck? I've been waking up like this for the last few weeks, at roughly this same time (that's 3:00 am, plus-or-minus an hour of tossing, turning, praying, finding the "rain" music on my iPod, and wishing I could take large amounts of sleeping pills). Tonight, I wound up on the couch (David has a cold/allergy thing, and bless his heart, I can't handle it), and after a particularly vivid dream about my step-mom, here I am yet again. Wide. A. Wake.
I could write about philosophical meanderings, but I really don't have much on my mind (or is it so much, that I can't make it all make sense?). I could make something up that might make me look deep or super-spiritual (I'm not). I could contemplate the frustrations of the sudden appearance of cellulite where I never had it before (WTH? Really?!?!? NOW, of all times in my life?!?) or the fact that I can most likely cross that concept of a bikini off of my bucket list...I could go back to that ever-underlying sense of something missing in the Cooley household, but that's pretty obvious, and I don't feel like indulging in a pity party today. I could mention that I can think of at least 3 instances of unwelcome advice/recommendations from people regarding my reproductive status in the past week alone, and how trying that is, but when I put it in that perspective, I'm pretty sure you get my point...besides, getting THAT riled up when all I want to do is go back to sleep is probably counterproductive.
There's a lot that I could say.
There's far too much that I do say.
The things I should say, I usually bury under fear and self-loathing...
And the things I should leave alone, I usually blurt out in a montage of oblivity and/or what boils down to pride.
Ever wonder what your life would be like, if you'd have just moved your chess piece one square over in a different direction? How much impact would that one square make?
That's one for 4:00 am.
Ever wonder if any of it will make sense? Or if you'll ever live long enough to see if He truly makes everything work out for His good? If He really does have those "plans to give us a hope and a future?" Or how our various messes eventually come together and make the amazing tapestry He's set into order (don't get that last phrase twisted--I'm not a Calvinist)?
No one has it easy. Nobody's life is perfect, no matter what beautiful pictures we make on Sunday morning. We all have what we want people to see, and what really is (and I don't care who you are--we're all in the same boat). As honest as I've always said I wanted to keep my blog, I've been avoiding it for the last few months because I don't want to face the backlash of what people would think if I really let 'er rip (and that includes my husband, whom I will respectfully defer to, as he is the head of this household, and I'm not going to post anything that would elicit the "CASS!" response that I know when to expect :) on certain issues, be they theological, political, or otherwise. I also have been just too plain lazy to do the research on a few things that I will eventually get to (adoption, surrogacy, US infant mortality rates, creation, evolution, abortion, and the fact that Charles Darwin was one of the biggest racists EVER, yet we allow his sick, twisted beliefs on the "origin" of our "species" to dominate our "educational" system)...
Hey, that might just be why I'm awake at 4:00 am...that's a lot on my to-do list.
None of those are peaceful issues to discuss, and a few of them could totally offend people if they let it (regardless of the fact that it's my stinkin' blog). I've been afraid to tackle any of those subjects, because I didn't want it to affect my job or offend anyone who didn't want to hear my conclusions...but I really need to get back to writing stuff that matters, so I'm thinking I need to get over my "fear of offending" and (post-spousal review) intelligently present my simple opinion of complicated issues....The last 2 times I said I was going to do this, I wound up hitting the "snooze" button...darn it!
And no, I don't really think anyone cares. Since this blog has nowhere NEAR the hits as my original MS blog, I think at this point in my writing "career," I'm safe to postulate.
With that off of my chest...and a to-do list that I'd better get cracking on, just in case that New Madrid-or-whatever fault-line-earthquake-apocalypse-thing hits St. Louis, and I lose my internet connection...I'm going back to sleep.