A Manifesto

Once I heard an analogy about how un-forgiveness is like a cage. When you refuse to forgive someone you trap that person inside your heart, making it impossible for you to let the situation go, and move on. You'd think that keeping this analogy in mind would make it easier to forgive people. After all, who wants to carry around a load of hurt in their heart? Who wants to constantly think of the person who wronged them?

I do.

Well...I don't want to, but I tend to do it anyways. I carry a lot of bitterness around. Towards girls who made thoughtless remarks about my appearance and personality. Towards boys (half of whom didn't know of my existence) who took up a lot of space in my mind and heart for a time, but then ended up not being "the one." Towards teachers and authority figures who I feel have let me down. Towards myself for making childish mistakes over and over and over again. Towards random people who I don't really know, for no real reason other than they remind me of hurtful people and situations from the past.

My bitterness whispers to me throughout the day about how I am justified in being unhappy. It's okay to be angry because I have been wronged, hurt, mistreated, and used. Those things excuse my behavior. I have been treated unkindly, so why should I bother with kindness toward others? People who I trusted failed me, so why should I open myself up to new relationships that might also fall apart? It's okay to pretend to be invincible, to be cold toward others, to hide behind a slowly cracking shell of perfection, to dislike people based on their appearance, or their friends, or their voice, or any other random reason I can think of.

No.

Bitterness is toxic. It blocks out the sunshine and it murders my hope and my happiness. I have ceded enough of my life to un-forgiveness. I have held all of the hurts and mistakes hostage in my heart for long enough.

Yes, people have failed me. Yes, I have failed myself. But there is more to the story.

If GOD, who has much more right to be un-forgiving than I do, was both capable and willing to forgive those people (and me), then I have no right to hold onto all of that crap anymore.