Are you carrying a grudge? Am I? Why? It doesn’t make sense. Why would I pick up something each day that weighs me down and carry it around with me? But sometimes, a nagging voice kept on whispering “But she hurts me so much!” Yes, but by carrying a grudge I’m enabling her to keep hurting me. I won’t do that to myself!
I absolutely know I’m supposed to forgive other people, but sometimes forgiving feels like I’m giving up something. Let me share to you one of Lincoln’s stories about a man on his sickbed who had been told by the doctor that he didn’t have much time to live. He summoned an old friend named Brown with whom he’d quarreled bitterly. They hadn’t spoken for years. The man talked of how he was going to die soon, of how their petty differences looked in the face of death, and asked if they might be reconciled. The scene moved everyone in the room to tears. Brown clasped the dying man’s hands, embraced him, and turned to walk out of the room, a shattered man. Suddenly the man on the sickbed, having one final thought, raised himself up on one elbow and spoke for the last time: ‘But see here, Brown; if I recover, the old grudge still stands.’ This story makes me smile and think, ‘How foolish!’ But if I’m carrying a grudge, am I any different?
If you are reading this my friend: Forgiveness has freely given already but it takes time to heal the pain and only by the grace of God that the broken relationship of friends be restored. For the time being, I’m praying for you and I let the pain go and let God takeover. May you be happy on where you are now.
