foolishness, friendship and forgiveness

I found this reflection in a folder labeled “potential blogs”, and was encouraged and inspired by it. Since my current mental and emotional state can’t touch this level of insight and articulation, (due to past-my-bedtime T.V. viewing all week of “So You Think You Can Dance” and “The Office” episodes) I am posting this past reflection for you edification…


I hurt my back again this weekend. It is a common occurrence for me; every three or four weeks I do something that throws my body slightly out of wack, and am set back anywhere from 24 hours to a week, depending on the infraction. I have suspicions that no matter what kind of shape I get into physically, my back will remain a liability to my active lifestyle, until I change my belief systems. You see, I carry around too much mental responsibility on a regular basis, and it is completely natural that this imbalance would manifest itself in physical disability. How strange that knowing this, I do not change the way I think about myself and the world of people and things I interact with. How strange that I stay in this cycle: too much mental weight=painful injury=willingness to let go of too much responsibility= needed rest.


“As we observe our mental and emotional flow over a period of disciplined time, we recognize that we largely create our own experiences. I know this is embarrassing and some of us deny it, but it’s true. We have the power to decide what each moment means and how we will respond to it. We have power when we know we have the ability to respond freely.”
~Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs, p. 106, The Crossroad Publishing Company~



I am grateful today for my friends who pray for me when I hurt my back. I don’t mean that they get down on their knees with hands clasped before their faces and their eyes shut tight (although if any of you are praying that way for me, by all means, don’t stop). I mean they are carrying me around in their thoughts, and wondering how they can encourage me. They are taking time out of their normal routine to ask the question, “How can I be a friend to someone who is suffering?”

I appreciate the phone calls, where there are offers for help with groceries and child care. I am touched by the empathetic verbal responses to my description of where I’m in pain, and the medical advice concerning icing, drugs, stretching. Mostly though, I love the non-judgmental space created by the conversations that allow me to see the reality underlying my cycle of injury and healing. My current set of friends are hopeful, patient people who are not trying to fix or reform me, rather willing to show up and get their hands dirty in the garden that is my life, pulling a weed they see here, or watering a sapling that is drooping there. They want me to know I’m not all alone in the process of encouraging new growth, so that I might enjoy the hard work; breathe deep and see clearly what needs to be pulled out or nurtured.

It is humbling to be accepted and loved in this way, and very freeing. It makes me okay with the fact that I am stubborn and foolish, and even laugh at that. It makes me forgive myself for being such a tyrant to my husband and kids, in the initial stages of the “last straw” being laid upon my back. Because when the pain really hits, my ordinarily calm self turns into an unpredictable tornado of responses. I go from patient to angry to patient almost instantly; from apologetic to accusatory, then accusatory back to apologetic. My husband and kids have learned a new routine for the times when I’m injured: they get me my journal, a Bible or a book of ancient Suffi poetry, a lawn chair and a cup of tea or ice water. Then they help me out the door to filtered sunlight, or into a quiet bedroom. They give me permission to do what I’m resisting giving myself permission to do in the hours or days leading up to my injury:

*stop being in charge of anything or anyone other than myself for a moment or an hour or a day

*stop answering questions and making decisions for anyone other than myself

*isolate, meditate, and do whatever it takes to remember my humanity: my limited capacity to accomplish any task without proper rest


“We have defined freedom in the West as the freedom to choose between options and preferences. That’s not primal freedom. That’s a secondary or even tertiary freedom. The primal freedom is the freedom to be the self, the freedom to live in the truth despite all circumstances.”
~Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs, p. 108, The Crossroad Publishing Company~


The truth I come to when I enter into rest is the realization that life is a gift, and there are reminders of life everywhere to sweep me away in gratefulness. When I stop worrying about the role I play with everything and everyone I’m involved with, I start noticing things like wind and sun painting shadow pictures on the leaves of the oak trees, or steam swirling inward and outward and up into the infinity above my teacup. I start remembering crazy things I did in my childhood, or kind words emailed to me by my friend from Pasadena. I stop taking things for granted, without even trying to, and find myself forgetting to be angry at even the most obvious things, like my back pain that can’t be touched by Tylenol with Codine. This is the truth I come to when I rest, but it wouldn’t be my truth if I was still caught up in the restrictive web of unforgiveness.


What do I mean by forgiveness? I guess I mean a letting go of all the people and things that have maimed you in your past and embracing the possibility that despite all of that, you are exactly who you are supposed to be in this moment of present existence, and a whole world of healing is open to you. I also mean a letting go of all the people and things that you have maimed in the past and an embracing of the idea that you can be free not only from cycles of violence you’ve participated in but also from all the shame and guilt and condemnation spoken against you because of them. I mean a state of grieving, celebrational acceptance, where you humbly agree that nothing else matters right now except the fact that you are alive and have more life to live. Forgiveness is the hardest and craziest thing we are called upon to participate in in this life. It is the most rewarding thing too, because forgiveness opens the heart up to gratitude, and gratitude changes our perspective on everything.