Burying The Hatchet

I woke up Sunday morning with this odd feeling. I didn't want to go to Church. There was going to be something in the message or in Sunday School that was clearly an instruction to me and it was going to be hard to follow. I told Will I felt kinda sick. He didn't pursue it. He told me I sounded a lot better and wasn't coughing or running a fever. I felt like a 6 year old trying to come up with excuses. We're going to be late for service anyway. If I don't feel too good after Church can we come straight home?

Church was great and it was time for Sunday School. The apprehensions I had been feeling had melted away during a wonderful time of worship. We went to class and the new teachers were there. They handed out some paper to everyone with a picture of an axe on it that looked ready to color. Oh cool, this is going to be a fun class. Then we launched into the lesson and it was about burying the hatchet. Oh, its not an axe, its a hatchet. The first part of the lesson was what to do as Christians if someone had offended you. The second part was what if you were the offending party. The teacher Dan told us to write down the name of any person God brought to mind that we needed to sort things out with and carry it in our Bibles till we had reached out to them and then bury that piece of paper as a symbolic act. Uh-Oh. I knew I should have stayed home. The thing is I was the offending party. And the offense was something done years ago when not a Christian that I still hadn't apologized for. God had reminded me about it once a few years ago and I made a semi-decent attempt to find her contact information but that didn't go anywhere. Now I had Facebook and I was pretty sure I knew someone who knew how to reach her.

For three days I tried to argue it away. God has already forgiven me so why do I need to do this? We were 11 years old then, I was just a child. Everybody does mean things at that age. She probably does not even remember me. But this is not easy! I tried talking to Will about it. He had two questions: Did I know then that what I was doing was wrong? Yes. Was she hurt by my actions? Yes. "Then you can do this Hannah!". I need a second opinion!!

Thursday afternoon I sat down to write her an apology. It was hard. I told her I wanted her to know I was sorry for my actions. I was sorry I had not come forward earlier to apologize. I regretted the things I had said and done and regretted not fixing the situation earlier. I regretted how cold and stressful our relationship had been from then till we graduated high school. I sat back and read the mail. And then I realized that I had to send it. Even if she didn't forgive me, she had to know that I felt sorry for what I did. I scanned my list of friends for anyone I knew that knew her equally well and copied her as well because I knew that if I had apologized years ago, it wouldn't have been a secret. Once I was done typing, I felt a lot better about it. I realized that even if I got a response with a lot of *$#!*(& in it, it would be OK. If she never responded, that would be OK too. This was an act of obedience. I clicked on send and this burden lifted off of me.

I didn't get back a mail with a lot of #$%!$#% in it. In fact, she responded with the sweetest little mail telling me to forget about what happened and to let bygones be bygones. Wow.

It's time to take my piece of paper with my hatchet on it and bid goodbye to it forever!

It May Not Take Sticks 'n Stones

I feel like I first need to apologize to any blog readers I may have for the lack of posts. I wish I could blame it on pregnancy or fatigue or a lack of time but I have to be honest and say it has more to do with the sad state of my quiet time over the past couple of months. There's something about sitting at the feet of God and having a good conversation, letting God feed my mind with His word and processing it over the course of the day that lent me some sense of creativity to write a blog. And with a lack of quiet time that was easily gone. I have missed it dearly though and I'm glad having this blog around made me realize what an impact it had on my life before I let it slide completely.

My new translation project gives me a lot of free time. I've used some of it to catch up with movies from home that I haven't seen in ages. I recently watched a Hindi movie titled "Taare Zameen Par". One among a few that I would recommend to someone that understands the language or doesn't mind subtitles. One scene in particular really stood out in my mind. The protagonist, a teacher, is trying to help the parents of a dyslexic boy understand that every time they belittle him about his poor grades and performance in school they are just crushing his spirit a little more. He mentions that in the Solomon Islands, some villagers practice a unique form of felling trees. They just surround it and abuse it with their words and eventually the tree dies and falls over.

The Bible reminds us a few times about the importance of the words of our mouth and gives us this instruction in Ephesians 4:29 - Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. In other words, if you're going to open your mouth and say something that could discourage someone, cut someone down or do no good to them its better to just shut up. I've realized I give my opinion all too freely sometimes under the guise of "constructive criticism" but only a small percentage of that may actually build someone up. It's an area I need to work on, very hard. I've watched Will in two scenarios - wilt under an authority that was particularly sarcastic and critical of him and absolutely excel under an authority that encouraged and motivated him. It's time I made a choice about the kind of influence I want to be for the people in my life.