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!