Usually Duffy is right. He tells me to go do something or not to do something. When I listen, things go better. When I don't, I am at sixes and sevens with myself. So I go to the river...expecting...I don't really know what...but from all intents and purposes, I feel I have achieved so little
Other than not answering my phone messages or text messages or emails. I expected some revelation, some transformation to happen. And then, after nearly three days, the sad journey back down the mountain...each hill, each rise...all I felt was, "I do not want to go back home." I want to go play on a zip line, or fish, or fly over the walley...or just sit up at my friend's home...and have my meals with the birds.
I made about four strange videos, I think...perhaps more...of the birds, of the river, of me sitting in the hammock. I kind of thought, if I died, then these little things my give a more accurate description of who I was...if I mattered at all.
But I had to go up the mountain, and I had to come down the mountain...and sit here...in my home...again...to realize what it all meant. I didn't get to know along the journey. But here, I begin to see...and it's okay to write again.
Packing the car, I walked around the garage, "what will I need on this journey?" I kept asking myself. A chair, a hat...bottled water...and there, next to my bicycle, was a CD "The Bridge of San Lius Rey" by Thorton Wilder...oh, yeah, I thought, a book to pass the time.
The things I thought I would need, I didn't really use. Some things I did. And there were a few things I forgot. I forgot that it is colder up in the mountains. But my bad housekeeping habits paid off. I found a sweatshirt and a waterproof jacket in the trunk. I did not have my hiking boots, but the tennies worked just fine.
Now that my head is not so stimulated by the beauty of the Ozarks, I can write a little. Yesterday's writing was...disappointing...but proof that perhaps it does require a little effort and a lot of God to get things on to a page.
As I popped in The Bridge of San Luis Rey into my CD player, and listened...my breath was taken away. Oh, I thought, is this why Keith told me to read the book? (Keith was the Methodist minister who walked me through my divorce) I remember, 15 or so years ago, what the book was about...about luck...and providence. I remembered that the conclusion was that "bad things just happen," there is no real explaining of them. But I completely forgot all the details. Like the first story in the book, about the mother who loved her daughter so deeply...but really only loved herself...and I found myself weeping and weeping...and holding my mouth...and wondering if Keith knew, if I had given him a clue without meaning to...of that part of my emptiness. He was there with me iin the days after my mother died...did I not filter my feelings? I recall falling to the floor in his office and pounding it...and hating that I had been born a woman. I'm pretty sure I scared the hell out of him...but he hung in there...he let me grieve...the head...the tail...the whole damn thing.
So again, I grieve. Traveling up the mountain, I grieve. The mother who could never be there for me. The fact that I could never satiate her hunger to be loved and needed...and that I most likely passed on all these dysfunctions to my beautiful daughter. Oh, how I must have let my daughter down when she was little...because I was so uable to give love...because no one had ever given me any...so I had none to give away. Will she ever figure it out? Will she understand that I meant to do good? It that enough? Will she forgive me? And here, riding up the mountain...I know I must forgive myself.
I do not want to do that work.
Of course, I didn't understand any of that while it was happening. But God made certain I undersrood...in the words of my friend...and oddly, in the words of the guy who was working for her. God was certain to pound it into my head.
Forgive...or die here. It's your choice. You can still breathe...and look like you are living...but you are not alive. As long as you do not forgive, you will remain in death. Forgive all of it, Cindy. Not just the ugly parts, and not just the pretty parts. Forgive it all. Or die.
It got more interesting as the young man who tagged along with the contractor began to ask me questions...about forgiveness.
About as innocent as it could have been, he asked me a question,
"What sins does God not forgive?"
I knew a little bit about why he was asking this question. The contractor and I had been discussing the day before my spiritual journey, and his...
And we talked. Only one unforgivable sin, the one that denies that God has the power to forgive. Big ideas to get your head around...I don't know if I helped him much...but I know he helped me.
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I had to get up and dry my hair. I have a communion service to do right now. And hospitals to visit next week. Is it all coincidence? Maybe. Maybe it's just luck.
Or maybe, it's true:
For when you seek Me, you will find Me,
if you seek Me with your whole heart.
I've just begun to sort this out. There is much more to unpack. Do I find it interesting that this topic arrives for me on Divine Mercy Sunday? That my annulment was granted...that the letter arrived this week from the Diocese? That today, April 15...a Sunday...was the exactly day my husband left...on a Sunday, on April 15th...1995. And my son was sitting on the sofa alone when I got home from church. It was cloudy. The house was dark.
I walked in with some confusion, but the preceding days were very intense. I looked at Bobby. He was sitting in the dark.
"Dad left. (Pause) He hugged me goodbye."
Divine mercy. Either accept it...and then give it away...or die. Simple as that.
I've got more to think about.
Hope this stimulates you to do. To forgive today.
Love, Cindy
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