I began the un-Christmasing of my house today. I got out boxes from the attic and other places where I keep them squirreled away, took the ornaments off the tree and set them out on the coffee table in the living room, and took down and wrapped up all the lights from the tree. It will be ready for me to take it out and down to the curb for collection by the recycling people on Monday. He was a good tree–Ichabod–if a little bit crooked and oddly shaped in a few places. I didn’t have a tree last year for a variety of reasons, so this was the first tree since I moved out on my own not quite two years ago. I had thought that taking it down might make me a little sad, but it was actually quite uneventful and without strong emotion; it simply was time. As is true of many things in life, there is indeed a time for everything, for every purpose under heaven.
Tonight I am still pondering the broad (and deep) concepts of forgiveness and letting go. Often when something keeps coming up as a theme in my conversations with other people or in my writing it means that there’s something I need to be exploring more deeply for myself. Today I spent a very long time on the phone with a good friend talking about a variety of issues concerning her relationship with her partner. As we talked, no matter where the conversation started, it kept coming back to her need to forgive, let go, and move on. Three simple things to do, right? Especially in one’s most intimate relationships. I listened, I asked questions, and I offered examples from my own life around the importance for her own sake of not holding onto hurt, anger, and resentments. “In the end,” I asked her, “who are you hurting by not letting go?” I asked the question several times over the course of the conversation until it became completely clear to her how much she was suffering by holding onto all the emotions and drama associated with the situation.
I have learned through much trial and pain and drama in my life the importance of forgiving, letting go, and moving on. I might recognize the importance of it and all the good reasons why I should engage in those actions in the interest of my own wellbeing and peace of mind and heart. But knowing the what and the why is one thing, knowing the how and implementing it is quite another. I’ve gotten a lot better at letting go mostly because I’ve had a lot of practice; I’ve experienced painful situations and I had the choice of hanging on to my righteous and rightful anger and indignation and potentially being eaten alive by it, or I could let the pain wash up, over and through me, experiencing it and as best I could to forgive myself and the person(s) who wronged me, and move past the pain toward healing. There is no manual for how to do this perfectly; there are broad concepts and general precepts to follow, but they must be supplemented by individualized instruction, personalized for every single individual on the planet. In other words, no one can really deal with our own internal stuff except us.
I don’t pretend to have a lock on understanding how to forgive, let go, and move on. As I told my friend today, “You get to practice this over and over again. You don’t simply forgive once and get on with life. Depending on how deep the wound, you will be forgiving for a long time, sometimes over years.” But at the end of all this forgiving is freedom for you. You’ll stop focusing on the other person, what they did to you or didn’t do enough of, and really begin realizing that the only person you have control over is you and that you own your own reactions to what happens around you. “If you can’t think of the benefits that come from forgiving someone, think about the consequences of your not forgiving them.” I told my friend. I’m not sure how much of all this got through to her, though when we were hanging up she thanked me and told me how much she appreciated having me in her life. I told her I love her and that’s what we do for each other, we are there for one another, we’ve got each other’s back and all that other stuff that best friends do.
I am grateful for the opportunity to keep thinking about and practicing the acts of forgiveness, letting go and moving on. In order to learn and practice, it sometimes means that one must suffer, get hurt, experience loss and pain. But there’s peace and healing and wholeness as one grows into the practice of forgiveness, I am living testament to that. And in the end, it simply doesn’t get any better than that.
