Oh, The Stones We Hold

After mass last Sunday, my mum and I decided to walk to a nearby Tim Hortons. We sat there in a booth, warming our hands against our cups, and we started to talk. About small things first; my work, her work, the homily.. And somehow, we started to wade into deeper waters.. She spoke about forgiveness. She didn’t speak so much of the hurts she experienced or the wrongdoings done against her as she did the act of forgiving: the letting go, the trusting God.

“Do you understand?” she asked me.
I managed a muffled, “Yes.”
With tears streaming down both my face and hers. The Tim Hortons was jam packed, and every table around us was filled with people, but it seemed as though the whole world quieted to the sound of my breathing as I silently mopped up my tears. I looked up to see my mother softly smiling.

I have always thought of myself as a generally forgiving person. I’ve been able to forgive to the point that I forget. But it seems that I hold on to wrongs done to others, especially the ones I love most, and I grudgingly hold on to these as though my anger would somehow avenge the ones I love. But through my mother’s words, I was gently reminded that I am freeing myself when I forgive. Rather than clenching tightly to the rocks while I swim, motivated to continuously push forward, determined to hold on, I let the rocks in my palms sink, and I was more able to swim freely; my movements changing from a hard and heavy splashing to a light and gentle glide. I can see God smiling down, as though I finally got what he had been trying to tell me for quite some time. “You were only making it harder on yourself.”

You cannot be right with God and wrong with man.