Little Addendum to my last post

I don't know if I've ever posted twice in one day, but I wanted to get my thoughts on this out there because I don't want to lose this thread and let it vaporize in the attack from the Enemy of distractions and incredibly negative thoughts threatening to wash away all traces of the path that might lead me out of this pit.

I watched an episode of the Closer while on the treadmill. The storyline included a couple who had lost their daughter to a murdering rapist and watched him get convicted but receive a mere 8 years in prison. After he got out, the girl's mother found out where he got hired for work and pass out fliers to everyone at his job, telling what he had done, so he kept losing jobs. When police questioned the couple because they were suspects in the murder of their daughter's killer, the father asked, "Was he brutally tortured before he suffered a long painful death? No? Then it wasn't me." It was really clear that these fictional but realistic characters had clearly not only lost their daughter, but themselves.

As I pondered this story later, I considered how the offense doesn't really matter; the nature of the loss doesn't really matter. When it's all said and done, unforgiveness is amazingly consistent in its effect. I could search my whole life and never find someone who understands exactly what I'm going through, because as the Proverb says, "Each heart knows it's own bitterness." And somehow, it's tempting to believe the uniqueness of my situation justifies staying in that bitter place. But I'm starting to realize that my path is simply a different path that leads to an amazingly similar end.

The Lord illumined something else as I meditated on the effects of unforgiveness: the nature of my burden. I think I carry more upon myself because I have started to lay so much on others. If I cut others little slack, I end up cutting myself even less. I wondered, as this bitterness has grown in my heart, how much my burden of guilt has increased as well, so gradually that I forgot that my heart didn't used to be this heavy. As I allow myself to judge others in the ways they have not met my expectations, I become VERY aware that others have expectations of me as well. And sometimes these are actual expectations, and sometimes they are imagined, and they all increase the pressure, the burden, the weight.

It's like how it is to run on that treadmill. I used to run that same three miles in high school, but it's not the same three miles, if you know what I mean. I weighed 120 when I ran it back then and now I weigh.... well... more. I'm not going to put that in black and white. :) And it's been about 25 years since I ran and it's not like I added all that weight at once. So I don't remember being different, but I know it was. And if I could lose it all at once, I'm sure I'd feel like I was on wings once I started running.

Jesus offers a quick-loss program. I could lose this weight of unforgiveness, but sometimes it seems more elusive than that 120 mark on the scale.