a fence…

A fence…

You hurt, betrayed, disappointed, failed me

and so I took a fence…

I took a fence and walled you out

away from my heart forever.

Somehow, however, my fence failed

It did not wall you out as you were never far

from my thoughts,

my heart

You got through my fence

like you always did…

Instead

it walled me in,

wrapped me up in unforgiveness,

kept me cold, distant and unaware.

I took a fence and walled not you

but me

trapped in bitterness

captive to my pain

cornered by my fears

ensnared

by my own offense.

– Lindsay Durell 2012

For a while now, it has been on my heart to write about unforgiveness, yet I find myself doubting what good my words will do and whether I really have anything to say on the topic that has not been said before. And yet, I find that I am learning that not everything has to be revolutionary or full of purpose and it’s alright to just write for the sake of writing. But, being the idealist that I am, I do somehow hope that these words will at least make your heart a better place, if not the world.

“Offense is taken, not given” – A friend of mine once said these words in passing and yet they have never left my mind; in fact, they inspired the poem you just read.

So often we are offended by the words, choices and actions of others, yet the offender is not even aware of their offense. The offender continues with their life, oblivious to our anguish, disappointment or wounding and we are left in the aftermath, which we so often choose to carry with us on our journeys. And unfortunately, all too often the aftermath results in calloused, bitter, angry hearts replete with unforgiveness.

The irony of it all is that somehow we sometimes believe that unforgiveness is a sort of revenge and yet as someone rightly put it, “Unforgiveness is like taking poison and expecting someone else to die.” Unforgiveness is poison, it will and does destroy people. It destroys relationships, it destroys hope and it holds us back in more powerful ways than a fence ever could.

We all harbour unforgiveness of some sort, I guess it is part of our human condition. We harbour unforgiveness towards those who have abused us, hurt us, discriminated against us, lied to us, abandoned us, betrayed us, disappointed us. We harbour unforgiveness when people are not who we need or want them to be. We harbour unforgiveness when the people we love don’t live in the way we would want them to. We harbour unforgiveness  against people we don’t even know; “them”, “those people”. We harbour unforgiveness against God, usually because we have been hurt by people acting in His name. We even harbour unforgiveness against ourselves for choices we have made, the hurt we have caused and for our ‘failures’.

I once read one of those cheesy sugar packets that said, “When you forgive someone the knots are untied and the past is released.” Cheesy it is but it’s true though. Forgiveness is NOT easy, in fact it is probably one of the hardest things to do, particularly when we have been deeply hurt. And it will never happen instantly. It is a conscious, repeated decision that has to come from a place of humility where we understand our own imperfections and thus, those of others. But it will release us to live in freedom.

To forgive is to no longer hold past wrongs against someone, so that in one’s thinking, feeling, and acting towards and in regards to them, there is no barrier to love. That is an incredible challenge.

The practical outworking of forgiveness looks different for every person and in every story but I know one thing, it always looks good, does good and is good.

xx