Day 306 – Right Remembering

Having a Heart in a Sometimes Heartless World

Scripture focus: Remember our history, friends and be warned…just experiencing God’s wonder and grace didn’t seem to mean much – most of them were defeated by temptation during the hard times in the desert, and God was not pleased. The same thing could happen to us. We must be on guard so that we never get caught up in wanting our own way as they did…we are as capable of messing it up as they were. Don’t be so naïve and self-confident. You’re not exempt. You could fall flat on your face as easily as anyone else. Forget about self-confidence; it’s useless. Cultivate God-confidence. 1 Corinthians 10:1 – 12, selected Verses from The Message

One holiday season Pete got a nice Christmas bonus. He upped our holiday budget – and boy was I thrilled! We bought whosits and whatsits, whizzles and wazzles. We used lights to excess and added extra desserts on the holiday buffet. I didn’t have to check price tags or clip coupons. And I thought it was the good life. But I can’t tell you a single thing I bought or what was given that year.

I, however, still remember Vern. It was one of Meredith’s first Christmases – when she actually was old enough to get excited and not drool on stuff. We took an evening and counted our pennies and shopped ‘til we dropped – not because of all the loot we were going to haul home - but because every penny counted. And when every penny counts, we’ve discovered we value what the pennies purchase.

So let’s remember rightly as we push toward Thanksgiving and Christmas. Think back to previous holidays – and the anticipation we felt as they approached. Can you remember hoping for a Norman Rockwell kind of celebration – only to discover you forgot to cook the turkey (I have a friend who can instruct you if that happens…)? Were you hoping for the perfect Christmas Eve celebration – and Uncle Frank got all liquored up, causing quite a ruckus? What about the perfect destination vacation – ruined because of flight cancellations?

Wow – with all those expectations of perfection firmly attached to our back, we won’t be able to straighten up to set the table, much less get an early morning workout in! We must be on guard so that we never get caught up in wanting our own way…

How about if we think of our Thanksgiving and Christmas season differently this year?

If you remember back to past slip-ups in your efforts to recover your life and find your way back to God – what could we do differently if we cultivated God-confidence, rather than relying on our plans for the best holiday party ever?

Recommended reading: Ezekiel 3 and 4 in the morning; Ezekiel 5 and Hebrews 4 in the evening

Copyright 2008 NorthStar Community

Day 305 – Week 44 - Approaching the season of excess with maturity

Having a Heart in a Sometimes Heartless World

Scripture focus: Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ – the Message – have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives – words, actions, whatever – be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way. Colossians 3:15-17 The Message

We are rapidly approaching the season to be jolly. Before we get totally distracted by tinsel and silver bells – I want to tell you a story. Last weekend Pete and I were up rummaging in our attic. Stuffed in the fluff of insulation, totally out of his memory box, I found Vern. Don’t panic – he’s not one of our children! But he is precious to us. Vern was one of the first dolls we ever bought our daughter. She loved Vern with a passion – and so it was with much consternation that we realized our precious Vern had been gathering insulation prickles and dust instead of living the good life – stored all cozy in a box – waiting for a grandchild to love him to pieces.

Vern came into our lives at a tough time economically. I had given up my fulltime job to be a fulltime mom, and money was tight. Our total Christmas budget – including all that glitters – was probably a hundred bucks that year. And Vern was chosen because he was…well…cheap. But she loved him, and as far as Meredith was concerned – Vern was worth his weight in gold.

Since that Christmas, we’ve had a variety of economic conditions for the holidays. I don’t know about your household, but ours is definitely looking at the financial climate of our nation and wondering if this will be a Vern kind-of-Christmas. But here’s the thing. We loved that Christmas. Meredith ripped into packages without the least concern over cost or content. She loved the houseguests and Christmas tunes. She was delighted with the lights, the tree, the sugar cookies and the mystery of Santa. She loved watching the Grinch try to steal Christmas and Charlie Brown discover the true meaning of the season. She loved her velvety red Christmas dress and her shiny black shoes. If Mema hadn’t provided the wardrobe, she’d have worn hand-me-downs, and would have loved those too!

So before we start rushing off to spend more than we make and eat more than we should – could we please pause to prepare? Could we think more about how we’re going to cultivate thankfulness than how we’re going to manage to impress the neighbors with our rollicking reindeer on the roof? I’m a big fan of houses lit to excess. In fact, I hope you go all out – string those lights! Make your yard display musical as well! My family will drive by and admire your handiwork. But only do it if you can do it with the Peace of Christ. Only do it if the Word of Christ is able to have the run of the house along with the mechanical snowmen. Use good common sense this year – and remember, the best memories aren’t about the gifting – but about the giving. I hope you’ll find time to hang with us for the next sixty days of devotionals – we’ll be concluding this year with a theme: living the satisfying life, one day at a time!

Recommended reading: Ezekiel 1 and 2 in the morning; Ezekiel 3 and Hebrews 3 in the evening

Copyright 2008 NorthStar Community

Day 304 – Month of October at a glance

Scripture focus: It’s news I’m most proud to proclaim, this extraordinary message of God’s powerful plan to rescue everyone who trusts him…God’s way of putting people right shows up in the acts of faith, confirming what Scripture has said all along: “The person in right standing before God by trusting him really lives.” Romans 1:16-17 The Message

A review of the 12 lessons from the life of Randy Paush…

Lesson one: Don’t bluff your way through life – think before you act.
Lesson two: It’s not the foolish who seek wise counsel – it’s the wise. Learn how to ask for help, and choose your advisors wisely.
Lesson three: Surround yourself with awesome friends, and learn how to appreciation correction.
Lesson four: Develop an understanding of the true meaning of forgiveness, and practice forgiving (and asking for forgiveness) in all your affairs.
Lesson five: Develop an attitude of gratitude – we don’t get what we deserve.
Lesson six: Trials will come – learn how to make lemonade.
Lesson seven: Live life on God’s terms, and he will provide us with everything we need.
Lesson eight: Listen to your parents – and learn from them. Learn from their positive influences, and make the decision to stop repeating multi-generational unhealthy patterns.
Lesson nine: Work hard and love your work. The value may be in how you work more than the task at hand.
Lesson ten: Live life God’s way.
Lesson eleven: Learn how to live with this belief – “I have everything I need.”
Lesson twelve: Learn to live life God’s way, and in so doing – experience joy.

A reminder of the process of forgiveness…

1. One can forgive without the offender making amends, but one cannot restore relationship with the offender. Forgiveness happens, but the forgiver must hold the gift of forgiveness in their heart until the offender is ready to do his/her part in the reconciliation process. (That part is: I was wrong when… I am sorry I hurt you when…What can I do to make restitution?)

2. Whether or not the amends process is initiated, the offended can begin healing by recognizing the injury.

3. Feel the feelings involved. Emotions like fear, guilt, shame, anger, hurt – are all likely responses. Name them.

4. Express the emotions – without sin. Name them within the limits of God’s love command.

5. Set appropriate boundaries.

6. Cancel the debt.

7. Consider reconciliation, in light of principle #1.

This month we’ve considered how to have a big heart and live a big dream – in spite of bad times. Then we looked at one of the hardest spiritual disciplines I know of – learning how to develop the habit of forgiveness. Along the way, we completed three hundred five days of our three hundred sixty day journey. Way to go!

Recommended reading: Lamentations 5 and Psalm 76 in the morning; Hebrews 2 and Psalm 77 in the evening

Copyright 2008 NorthStar Community

Day 303 – Expanding our view

Having a Heart in a Sometimes Heartless World

Scripture focus: Because the stakes are so high, even though you’re up-to-date on all this truth and practice it inside and out, I’m not going to let up for a minute in calling you to attention before it. This is the post to which I’ve been assigned – keeping you alert with frequent reminders – and I’m sticking to it as long as I live. I know that I’m to die soon; the Master has made that quite clear to me. And so I am especially eager that you have all this down in black and white so that after I die, you’ll have it for ready reference….2 Peter 1:12-15 The Message

The disciple Peter calls God’s people to right remembering. His letters, written all those years ago, still cry out to us – begging us to expand our view. This is a challenge. In unhealthy families, children have been trained from an early age to NOT listen to anything outside the limited teachings and beliefs of the family itself. It’s often in the best interest of the offender if the offended “just forget about it.” In the book of 2 Peter, Peter is expanding the view of early believers who had been knocked off course by some bad believing on the part of false teachers and lying religious leaders. We can learn from this guy. We can also learn from others who have studied and even lived in a dysfunctional family.

“There is a word for what happens when we try to forget painful memories instead of dealing with them straightforwardly. The word is ‘denial.’ ” David A. Stoop and James Masteller, Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves, p. 190.

“As children we are developmentally and constitutionally incapable of understanding that our parents may be sick. We don’t see that their sickness is the reason they do the things they do. We experience the neglect, the abandonment, the verbal, sexual, and physical abuse, but we don’t understand it – we don’t see the sick codependent logic that fuels the abusiveness of our parents.” Robert Subby, Lost in the Shuffle, p. 93.

“In dysfunctional systems the catastrophe that hits us is a continuous one and denial becomes a way of life, rather than a protective measure to be used only in extreme circumstances. The pain of living in a dysfunctional system is akin to slow torture as opposed to dying an instantaneous death. Day-by-day, year-by-year, decade-by-decade, we crawl deeper and deeper into a shell of denial, defensiveness, isolation and emptiness that is fueled by our shame and embarrassment at the thought of anyone ever finding out what is really going on inside of us. That is the nature of dysfunctional systems – they are closed and implosive, ever more self-destructive. In that sense, they are just like malignant tumors in the body.” John and Linda Friel, Adult Children: The Secrets of Dysfunctional Families, p. 102.

So here’s what I want to remind you of – in the middle of this study on forgiveness – it’s possible that there are some offenses – either yours or someone else’s – that have gone unacknowledged. This is a stumbling block to forgiveness. Without having a clean slate, it’s going to be super hard to experience transformation. So much of our energy is expended keeping up the wall of denial. I am praying that if you are feeling spiritually stuck, maybe it is time to think about how denial might be messing with your mind. Have you been offensive – has it ruined relationships with others – and you don’t even know it? Are you trying to live in uneasy, shallow, unspiritual states of forgiveness because you’ve not known what real forgiveness entails? No worries! Just checking! Expanding our view, reframing our memories, telling ourselves the truth all the time – these are essential skill sets, especially so if we’ve grown up in the land of denial! I love knowing that we have a God who loves to rescue and revive the distressed and distraught!

Recommended reading: Lamentations 3 and 4 in the morning; Hebrews 1 and Psalm 75 in the evening

Copyright 2008 NorthStar Community

Day 302 – Confusion

Having a Heart in a Sometimes Heartless World

Scripture focus: “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” Jeremiah 31:34 NIV

In yesterday’s devotional, I suggested that wrong remembering provided a window of opportunity for a perpetrator to re-offend. It was interesting to me the father’s perspective. When asked, “What were you thinking?” His response was, “I don’t think what I did hurt anyone. If my daughter had been so upset about what happened, she wouldn’t have let me near her own kid.”

This dad mistook his daughter’s gift of forgiveness (misguided perhaps, but sincere) and misinterpreted it. He assumes if his daughter made these choices, it was because his past actions didn’t matter.

Failing to understand how to work through the forgiveness process appropriately can cause further harm. As a review, let’s think about the steps to forgive.

1. One can forgive without the offender making amends, but one cannot restore relationship with the offender. Forgiveness happens, but the forgiver must hold the gift of forgiveness in their heart until the offender is ready to do his/her part in the reconciliation process. (That part is: I was wrong when… I am sorry I hurt you when…What can I do to make restitution?)

2. Whether or not the amends process is initiated, the offended can begin healing by recognizing the injury. Name the offense.

3. Feel the feelings involved. Emotions like fear, guilt, shame, anger, hurt – are all likely responses. Name them.

4. Express the emotions – without sin. Name them within the limits of God’s love command. It must be done without doing further harm, within the limits of respecting God, self and others. This can be done creatively and is best done with a lot of preparation. We do not have to express this emotion to the offender.

5. Set appropriate boundaries. People struggle with forgiveness because they confuse forgiving and reconciliation. Without reconciliation, extra special care will need to be taken to establish safe boundaries between offended and offender. Even with reconciliation, it is possible that the relationship will change in some way as a result of the past offense.

6. Cancel the debt. This can be another creative step. Props help. I once buried an offense in a box in my backyard! But the principle behind the cancellation is this: we’re transferring our case to a higher court – into the hands of a just God.

7. Consider reconciliation. (See #1)

Recommended reading: Lamentations 1 and 2 in the morning; Philemon 1 and Psalm 74 in the evening

Copyright 2008 NorthStar Community

Day 301 – Week 44 – Right Remembering

Scripture focus: “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” Jeremiah 31:34 NIV

I was shocked when I saw him at the mall, unsupervised, with his toddler granddaughter. Hadn’t he been convicted of molesting his own daughter when she was a small child? Not surprising, a few months later he was back in the news – again – charged with harming this little girl.

I watched with rapt attention as the reporter asked the question we all wanted answered, “Why did you let him babysit her?”

Her reply, “I’ve become a Christian, the Lord has told me to forgive and forget. That’s what I did. I just don’t understand why it didn’t work.” In trying to forget, this young woman further etched the memory of this abuse in her brain. It required a lot of self-deception (denial) for her to hold the memory off and not think about it. Ultimately, denial contributed to her poor decision making.

This woman has misinterpreted today’s focal scripture passage. God doesn’t have selective amnesia – and he isn’t asking us to acquire that skill either! God is a God of right remembering. Forgiveness enables us to stop obsessing over the wrong doing – it absolutely does not mean that we forget the offense happened. Nor does it mean that when we forgive, all the emotions associated with the crime dissipate.

“You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well.” Lewis B. Smedes, Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don’t Deserve, (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1984)

How could this mom live life God’s way?

1. She could forgive her father.

2. She could practice remembering rightly. She could remember the past act and the emotional turmoil it caused her. She could remember the consequences she experienced as a result of his sin. She could remember that he got caught – he never confessed. She could remember that he never sought counseling, made an amends and only “made restitution” because a judge threw him in the slammer.

Instead of forgiving and trying hard to pretend the bad thing didn’t happen, this mother’s healthy forgiveness and appropriate remembering could have resulted in this kind of conversation with her dad: “Dad, I love you and I have forgiven you for those early abuses. You served your time. But Dad, there are consequences for this abuse. I cannot allow you to be around my daughter unsupervised. You must keep your distance. You may not be alone with her for a nanosecond. If this guideline is violated, as much as I love you, I’ll have to draw an even bigger boundary. I hope you understand that there is no ill will intended, but my primary responsibility is to my daughter, and to God. Maybe you will never repeat this prior behavior. But I must do my part, and not assume anything. I hope you understand.” But even if he doesn’t understand her boundary - she’s gotta do what she’s gotta do. She wishes her dad well. But she doesn’t presume he is well.

Recommended reading: Psalm 72 and 73 in the morning; Titus 3 and Proverbs 27 in the evening

Day 300 – Week 43 at a glance

Having a Heart in a Sometimes Heartless World

Scripture focus: You are forgiving and good, O Lord, abounding in love to all who call to you. Psalm 86:5-6 NIV

This week we focused on forgiveness – and next we’ll continue the discussion. For now, how are you doing on your forgiveness quiz? In light of our studies, are there any answers you want to change?

Dr. David Stoop's Forgiveness Quiz*

1. T F When forgiving, I should always try to forgive and forget.

2. T F It's good to get angry when I'm trying to forgive.

3. T F I should give up all hard feelings toward the person I forgive.

4. T F I should try to forgive others quickly and completely.

5. T F Over time, my hurt will go away and my forgiveness of the other person will take care of itself.

6. T F If I've forgiven, I will never have feelings of hatred against those who have hurt me.

7. T F If I forgive, I am in some way saying that what happened to me didn't matter.

8. T F Forgiveness is basically a one-time decision. Either I do or I don't.

9. T F I can't forgive until the person who hurt me repents.

10. T F I should forgive even if the person who hurt me does not repent.

You have completed three hundred days of a three hundred and sixty six day journey. You rock! Keep going!

Recommended reading: Jeremiah 52 and Psalm 70 in the morning; Titus 2 and Psalm 71 in the evening

*Forgiving the Unforgivable, David Stoop, PH.D., Regal publishing, April 2005, p. 24.

Copyright 2008 NorthStar Community

Day 299 – Quick fixes

Having a Heart in a Sometimes Heartless World

Scripture focus: All you saints! Sing your hearts out to God! Thank him to his face! He gets angry once in a while, but across a lifetime there is only love. The nights of crying your eyes out give way to days of laughter. Psalm 30:4-5 The Message

“I need to get past this – my anger is hurting me and those I love.”

“Hey, I’m trying, but nothing’s happening! I still feel really emotional about this situation!”

In cleaning out my son’s closet, I found a book he wrote in kindergarten. Here’s the text from that work of art.

The Tricky Turkeys

By Michael McBean

One day there was a man named John. On November 26^th, John went hunting for his family.

He got lots of food. One kind of food was a turkey named Wack and another named Ou. (Get it? Wack-o?)

Later on in the day the turkeys were headed for the microwave

but they managed to escape with just a few injuries.

The story ends here because the turkeys raised such a ruckus that the people

who saw their escape refused to talk!

The End

As one forgetful friend can attest to – microwaved turkeys aren’t as yummy as the kind that you cook all day. Forgiveness isn’t microwaveable either.

“Remember that no matter how you verbalize your anger, you must forgive! Forgiving starts with an act of the will. Forgiving is a choice. It may take some time to work through the emotional feelings that are involved. We cannot immediately dismiss the feelings. Again, it takes time to reprogram our computer. It takes time to reprogram the feelings.” Happiness is a Choice, F. B. Minirth, M.D. and P.D. Meier, M.D., (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1978) p. 156.

I know it’s tough – but big hearted people learn how to do tough things! Just remember – lingering feelings do not discount the decision to forgive.

“The process of forgiveness is complete when what happened between us is no longer a ‘live issue’ in the way I think of you and relate to you, or in the way I live my life.” Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves, p. 169. That doesn’t mean we all of a sudden think happy thoughts all day, every day!

Recommended reading: Jeremiah 50 and 51 in the morning; Titus 1 and Psalm 69 in the evening

Copyright 2008 NorthStar Community

Day 298 – Anger management

Having a Heart in a Sometimes Heartless World

Scripture focus: A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control. Proverbs 29:11 NIV

What are we to do with our anger?

1. We can try to repress the emotion.

“Repressed anger is similar to the ‘call waiting’ feature on the telephone. You can go on with your life as if it weren’t there – but it is there. It won’t go away. It will find ways to ‘leak out,’ in the form of depression, bitterness, mistrust, self-pity, anxiety, criticalness, and so on.” Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves, p. 236.

2. We can vent.

“Authenticity may be well and good in its place. But running around yelling, cursing, and being destructive is no solution to anger. These ways of venting our anger may make us feel better, at least for the moment. But they ruin relationships, and in time they undermine our own emotional health.” Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves, p. 238.

3. We can feel angry, but not express it immediately.

“This means that we let ourselves experience our anger – we don’t repress it – but we also choose to handle it in productive and healthy ways. In other words, we decide to respond rather than react.” Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves, p. 238.

4. We can learn to confess our anger to someone we trust.

“First of all, let’s get clear about the word ‘confess.’ At its root, it simply means ‘to say the same as,’ or ‘to give accurate verbal expression to what is real.’ In this sense, it doesn’t carry the connotation of ‘admitting guilt.’ It simply means we are being candid and honesty about what is going on. Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves, p. 239.

These four principles are written about in the book cited above – these aren’t my ideas!

Take a look at them, and see if there are any you can particularly relate to – and see if there is something you need to get honest about in your own personal inventory!

Recommended reading: Jeremiah 48 and 49 in the morning; 2 Timothy 4 and Proverbs 26 in the evening

Copyright 2008 NorthStar Community

Day 297 – Anger and Forgiveness

Having a Heart in a Sometimes Heartless World

Scripture focus: If you, God, kept records on wrongdoings, who would stand a chance? As it turns out, forgiveness is your habit, and that’s why you’re worshiped. Psalm 130:3-4 The Message

Forgiving is God’s habit. Why then, is it so hard for those of us who want to live life God’s way to do the same?

“In most cases, we cannot really forgive until we have dealt with our anger. The emotion of anger, in and of itself, is not wrong. It just is. It is what we do with our anger that makes it either right or wrong, good or bad, healthy or unhealthy.” Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves, p. 224.

Of course, we need to learn what it means to forgive. Certainly it requires us to make the decision to follow through and actually practice the act of forgiving. But something stands in our way…could it be our anger? But wait a minute – have you ever been told that you shouldn’t feel “that way”? Unlike, Pete, who encouraged me to acknowledge my own legitimate and justifiable resentment, I suspect many of us have been taught to resist feeling angry.

“Healthy anger drives us to do something to change what makes us angry; anger can energize us to make things better. Hate does not want to change things for the better; it wants to make things worse.” Lewis B. Smedes, Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don’t Deserve, (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1984) p. 21.

“Perhaps the most damaging consequence of being shame-based is that we don’t know how depressed and angry we really are. We don’t actually feel our unresolved grief. Paradoxically, the very defenses which allowed us to survive our childhood trauma have now become barriers to our growth.” John Bradshaw, Healing The Shame That Binds You, p. 137.

So here we go with a preliminary right step – it’s important to tell ourselves the truth, all the time, about how we feel. And if we feel mad, we need to acknowledge it. But don’t stop reading, drop your devotionals and go express your rage!! There are some “not quite right” ways to take this preliminary step. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about it!

Recommended reading: in the morning: Jeremiah 45, 46 in the evening: Jeremiah 47, 2 Timothy 3

Copyright 2008 NorthStar Community

Day 296 – The Angry Heart

Having a Heart in a Sometimes Heartless World

Scripture focus: Go ahead and be angry. You do well to be angry – but don’t use your anger as fuel for revenge. And don’t stay angry. Don’t go to bed angry. Don’t give the Devil that kind of foothold in your life. Ephesians 4:26-27 The Message

Once upon a time I tried to avoid dealing with the “F” word – forgiveness – by trying really hard to avoid anger. I decided that good Christians “turn the other cheek” and “lay down their lives for a friend.” Surely this meant that I wasn’t supposed to get angry – at all, about anything. As usual, my husband was the person who helped me move past this limiting view. One day a person who should have been a friend behaved more like an enemy. Pete witnessed this interchange. Later that evening, he asked me how I was feeling.

“Fine. Why do you ask?” Truthfully, I didn’t want to know why he was asking. But it seemed like the polite, good Christian thing to say.

“Well, I’m thinking about the incident this afternoon, and wondering how you feel about it.”

“I feel fine about it. I know this friend has had a tough time lately, if acting like this somehow helps her through this tough time – who am I to get in the way?”

“Could I ask you a question?” He looks hesitant, and I respond in kind.

“I guess…”

“If this same incident had happened to someone else, how would you have responded?”

Silence. What a terrible question! “Can I think about it and get back to you?”

“Sure,” he replied. I was hoping he’d forget. After all, this is a man who forgets other things – like where recyclables belong or where he left his wallet, keys and cell phone. But he remembers the important stuff of life, and a future conversation teaches me some important life lessons. It seems I had a propensity to advise others to acknowledge wrong-doing when it occurs, and proceed honestly to the next right step. Evidently, I wasn’t following my own advice! I had developed a very shame-bound response when others treated me unkindly. I tried to forgive and forget. And by all means possible – never, ever get angry! I had a rigid system of belief. And something needed to change. “The shame-bound family system is fixed in its form and highly resistant to change, even though change is a natural fact of life. This system is analogous to peanut brittle, with each person fixed in stereotyped, inflexible roles and relationships to one another…When change exerts enough force all at one moment upon a rigid system, it may break and splinter. The shame-bound system does not have good capacity to absorb very much stress and still retrain its integrity.” M. A. Fossum and M. J. Mason, Facing Shame: Families in Recovery, (New York, NY: WW Norton, 1986) p.19. I mistakenly read a few scriptures that, when taken out of context, reinforced my tendency to play the role of martyr – and it was not serving me or my family well. Learning how to acknowledge, appropriately identify and healthily express my anger was a key early step in recovering my life.

Recommended reading: Jeremiah 42 and 43 in the morning; Jeremiah 44 and 2 Timothy 2 in the evening

Copyright 2008 NorthStar Community

Day 295 – Forgiving and Forgetting

Having a Heart in a Sometimes Heartless World

Scripture focus: Our Father in heaven, reveal who you are. Set the world right; Do what’s best – as above, so below. Keep us alive with three square meals. Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others. Matthew 6:9-12 The Message

If we’re going to live life God’s way – we must deal with the issue of forgiveness. One seemingly easy way to deal with past offenses is to decide to forgive and forget – ever heard that before? Where does that concept come from? Do desperately devoted followers of Christ forgive and forget?

“The person that has hurt me the most has been dead twenty years. I don’t know why I need to worry about forgiveness – I say, just forget about it! It’s in the past. Let’s move on!” For awhile, he does. He moves on. He gets married and eventually has his own children. Unfortunately for his kids, this father truly did forget. Now he parents in the same way he was parented. One day he reaches out to pat his son on the head, and the son winces. He draws back from the hand that sometimes gives but also takes away. In a flash, this dad remembers. He remembers a day, long ago, when he too wondered when his father’s hand turned toward him – would this be a hurting touch? This dad is rethinking the belief about forgiving and forgetting.

“Many of us left home, defiantly vowing, ‘I’ll never do it like my parents.’ Unfortunately, we are what we learn, and eventually, somehow, our parents manage to take up residence inside us. Only later as adults do we discover that we have never truly left home.“ Robert Subby, Lost in the Shuffle, ( Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, Inc., 1987) p. 92.

Seriously, by the time many of us get around to thinking about past wounds, doesn’t it seem like perhaps too much time has passed to deal with them? According to Drs. David Stoop and James Masteller, this argument - though attractive in some ways – is not the answer.

“We can’t just walk away and pretend that our family never happened. Indeed, trying to ‘walk away and pretend it never happened’ is one of the worst things we can do.” (Forgiving Our Parents Forgiving Our Selves, p.34)

If we can’t forgive and forget – what are we supposed to do? More on that tomorrow.

But for today, ask yourself the following: when have I approached forgiveness with the tenacity of an ostrich? How is that approach working for me?

Recommended reading: in the morning: Jeremiah 40, 41 in the evening: 2 Timothy 1, Psalm 68

Copyright 2008 NorthStar Community