The bill is coming due

It is

Soon enough. If you hold on to long to the past. the torturer is coming to your house.

Anger, Jealousy. Pain. Sadness. Fear. They may already be in residence. Perfectly normal sometime guests. Few will tell you to give safe harbor to the feels. They are just as real as joy and peace and excitement and hope. If we cannot allow for the reality of their companions, how will we know for their reality? But remember the old saying that "guests and fish begin to stink after three days." In reality, some have, I'm afraid, a much shorter shelf life. Fruit is designed to be used or gotten rid of, depending whether it is good or bad. Fruit is, at its very core, temporary, and intended as such. Your guests are not supposed to stay with you.

The problem with guests like will tun into something quite more. They will take on a life on their own, and they will overtake your life. They may push you to rage or inaction. They may become your identifiers or your focus, attaching to you in a way that divorce seems impossible and change seems unlikely. Fear becomes "my phobia", pain, "my trauma" Instead of being part of you, they become the lens through which you understand yourself and others see you. And in short, you before you know it, are in prison. Walled in, Tortured. Unable to find, or maybe unsure if you can, seek release.

Forgiveness is real. Here, however, is what I know about forgiveness. Forgiveness starts and ends with know that you are forgiven. That I can tell you with confidence, for me, for real, for sure.

Jesus says it best, so I'll let him. He tells the story

At that point Peter got up the nerve to ask, “Master, how many times do I forgive a brother or sister who hurts me? Seven?”

 Jesus replied, “Seven! Hardly. Try seventy times seven. The kingdom of God is like a king who decided to square accounts with his servants. As he got under way, one servant was brought before him who had run up a debt of a hundred thousand dollars. He couldn’t pay up, so the king ordered the man, along with his wife, children, and goods, to be auctioned off at the slave market. The poor wretch threw himself at the king’s feet and begged, ‘Give me a chance and I’ll pay it all back.’ Touched by his plea, the king let him off, erasing the debt. The servant was no sooner out of the room when he came upon one of his fellow servants who owed him ten dollars. He seized him by the throat and demanded, ‘Pay up. Now!’  “The poor wretch threw himself down and begged, ‘Give me a chance and I’ll pay it all back.’ But he wouldn’t do it. He had him arrested and put in jail until the debt was paid. When the other servants saw this going on, they were outraged and brought a detailed report to the king. “The king summoned the man and said, ‘You evil servant! I forgave your entire debt when you begged me for mercy. Shouldn’t you be compelled to be merciful to your fellow servant who asked for mercy?’ The king was furious and put the screws to the man until he paid back his entire debt. And that’s exactly what my Father in heaven is going to do to each one of you who doesn’t forgive unconditionally anyone who asks for mercy.”

Its a question of degrees. 10 million dollars versus One thousand dollars. But in what we don't expect, he says that the King turns his servant over to be tortured because he has wasted forgiveness and squandered grace. That torture isn't putative nearly as much as it a natural consequence of hanging on to someone else's debts-- quite literally the definition of forgiveness.

And that Jesus guy seems to know something.

thus spake,

me