Let Go

Sickness. Sickness. Sickness. 

Did I mention I am sick? Now that I have contracted the chest cold/flu from Hades, I have found time to write. About what you may ask? Nothing important. 

The funniest thing about coming down with something: the immediate desire to see your mom. Whenever I am sick I think about the scene from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind when Jim Carrey escapes to his childhood memories to preserve the memory of his girlfriend (which he decided to erase but now has second thoughts). In the movie he is crawling around under the table in the kitchen of his childhood home, in his childhood pajamas, and Kate Winslet (his girlfriend) has taken over the memory and become his babysitter. Everything dwarfs Carrey. The table, the refrigerator, even Kate - he's a 4 year old. He immediately becomes overwhelmed and begins to cry, and says he can not believe how strong the desire to see his mom feels. That's how I feel when I fall ill.

I am married. True. But I just want my mom. She always knew what to do, but she lives four hours away now. I trust my wife, she's smarter than me, but sometimes you just want to say, "Mommy!" 

Everyone chooses to hold on to something - I hold on to my mom's healing power. This quality makes each individual unique and quirky. You can picture your quirky quality now. Like the order you get ready in the morning, or how you only brush your teeth in clockwise motions, or maybe you only eat one thing at a time, or maybe you can not stand to put on wrinkled socks. But sometimes we hold on to other items. We remember pain, wrongdoing, and insult, and sometimes we can not let those go.

I know in my family some extended relatives have feuded for years over people smoking in their own house, and I myself have not talked to my wife for hours because she made me feel stupid during an argument. Sometimes these hurts seem insignificant and petty, but some hurts go deep and feel - significantly. 

Letting go can intimidate us. It can cause us to think that holding on would be easier than letting go. Once you have lived with that pain for so long, how can you let the pain go. It's part of you. But hurt weighs. Revenge weighs. Refusing to forgive weighs. 2009 just started and maybe that has inspired me to write this, or maybe I am on too much medicine, but the time to let go is now. Whether you need to forgive yourself, a friend, a family member, or even God, do it. 

Unforgiveness causes us to miss out on an entire person. That individual may have offended us, but they must have more to offer, and we can not find out if can not look past their offense. I know that I would someone to do that for me if I offended them. And even if you forgive that person and they still keep offended us, we know that we tried and the bitterness that eats at us can move on. The uncomfortableness of seeing them can disappear cause we tried to do what was right. And my Mom (there I am going back to my Mom again) always told me, "It takes a stronger person to forgive someone when they didn't apologize, than it does to stay angry and bitter." I invite you to let the hurt go. That will hurt, but it will heal faster than holding it in.

I have been blogging this entry for a couple of days because I've been sick, but it has been good mulling this over. I just wanted to end with something I saw on TV, in a very unlikely place. I watched Earl Thursday night, and that night on Earl's list he was trying to help his father get revenge on his mom. In the end Earl and his dad have a hilarious crying montage and talk about their feelings. And as Earl's father walks back home to his wife's loving arms to offer his forgiveness Earl says this in the voiceover, "My dad knew that anger was a heavy burden to carry, but revenge only made it heavier. Forgiveness made it lighter. So that's what he did."

Make your burden lighter.