As a parent, when things go wrong with your kids, you want someone to blame, namely overindulgent grandparents or other well meaning relatives. Maybe even friends of the family. Adam and Eve, had the best possible influence and guidance, from the Creator of the universe Himself. The boys, maybe could blame an absent father or an emotionless mother. But G-d wasn’t buying any of that. He went straight to the heart of the matter, confronting Cain with where he was at with regards to the feelings he had for his brother. Sibling rivalry is part and parcel of our human makeup and is aggravated by sin in this world. In the coming weeks, unless you’ve got ALL your Christmas shopping done, people will contend with certain emotions as they make their choices. Let me interject something that we were told one afternoon at Halloween at a residential care center, where I worked with pre-adolescent boys in a locked unit. The psychiatrist said that the period from All Hallows Eve (its correct title) through the New Year (Super Bowl Sunday) was not a time for “work” (meaning to deal with ones’ issues). All the emotional baggage that we carry around from all the holidays we’ve ever experienced with our relatives comes into play in this season. That is, unless, you’re willing to seriously focus on some things which I will share now. Please believe me, this works and will save hours in a therapists chair. This is something that’s been practiced by me and it has made a serious difference in my life. Call it my Christmas gift to you, EARLY. There are at least three persons for whom you hold accountable issues which plague your life. Without mentioning 2 of them, I bet you could probably guess, but the third you might have a hard time with. Now if you weren’t raised by a Mother and a Father, as some of us were, then you think of the two authority figures that were most instrumental. What I next tell you to do for these one or two persons, you do with the third, which I’ll share later, though you may guess. Let me share personally, I had issues with my Mother, who’s been dead these46 years and who I visited at her grave one day in SE Portland and from every corner of my heart, I forgave her things which she had done, which I have no need to go into. Because I lived with my father and because I attended 12 step meetings, I knew that we had to be wise and the step I took made a serious difference, so I share these steps. Whether you choose to share with one of the authority figures or not, is up to you, but choose wisely. Take time to recount your life and the things for which you hold this other person guilty in the way they affected your life. There’s a rationale in this and let me explain. We some times take some things and “sweep” them under the rug, so to speak. The more we sweep, the more a lump appears, which we may trip over and over and over. Eventually we just avoid that area all together. It’s also like having a garbage bag and someone coming along and putting garbage in your bag and you keep taking he garbage, until it just explodes, because you didn’t give the garbage back to whom it really belongs. So, then we sit down, either in person or in a letter, we write down all the offenses for which this person or persons is guilty. That’s step one. You’ve gotten it out. Then you either verbally or in writing say “and I UNCONDITIONALLY FORGIVE YOU”. When you take this step, it’s like cutting SOME of the mooring lines of the Queen Mary, which has been running her engines at full tilt, but notable to go anywhere. When I wrote that, in the case of my father, there was a weight that fell off. So much so, that it was unbelievable. HOWEVER, not as great as when I did the same thing for the third individual. This will come as a shock to some people, but you’ll find this to be true. We do not realize to what extent we blame this third person, for the failures that we have. We take potshots at many people around us. We point a finger of blame at so many other possible culprits, but frankly, it’s like the parable of the mote and the beam. Those objects, are really the same object, just looked at from a different point of view. Have you figured the third person? Did you guess that it was yourself or does this come as a shock? There may be those so hardhearted about this forgiveness business, but let me point to the cross. Let’s use the perfect man of all time as a living example. We know that He lived a sinless life according to the book of Hebrews, yet, before He could give up the ghost, what did He do, what were the words that came out of His mouth? It was words of forgiveness. Look at all that they’d done in the 24-36 hours since the Garden of Gethsemane. He did that as an example for all of us. Someone cuts you off in traffic? Forgive them, for they know not what they do. Cuts you off in the parking lot, the grocery line or an elevator? Forgive them, for they know not what they do. Know this, that we hold ourselves to blame for things that go wrong in our lives, more than we know. What my Mother did was nothing, but I had peace after that exercise, my Father, there was a bit more peace, but when I FORGAVE myself UNCONDITIONALLY and got on the same page with G-d who FORGIVES us in the same way, then I was truly at peace with myself and with Him and with my fellow man. Now you can do that also. If you do there’ll be a bigger miracle then the Exodus from Egypt.
Posted on: Sun, 02 Nov 2014 00:46:06 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015