How many who read this post have had somebody hurt you, maybe yesterday, maybe a lifetime ago, and you cannot forget it.  You did not deserve the hurt.  It went deep, deep enough to lodge itself in you memory.  And it keeps on hurting you now.  You are not alone.  We muddle our way through a world where even well-meaning people hurt each other.  When we invest ourselves in deep personal relationships, we open our souls to the wounds of another's disloyalty or even betrayal.

     There are some hurts that we can all ignore.  Not every slight sticks with us, thank God.  But some old pains do not wash out of our own memory.  Deep hurts we never deserved flow from a dead past into our living present.  A freind betrays us; a parent abuses us; a spouse leaves us in the cold--these hurts do not heal with the coming of the sun.

     We've all wished at one time or other that we could reach back to a painful moment and cut it out of our lives.  Some people are lucky; they seem to have gracious glands that secrete the juices of forgetfulness.  They never hold a grudge; they do not remember old hurts.  Their painful yesterdays die with the coming of tomorrow.  But most of us find that the pains of our past keep rolling through our memories, and there's nothing we can do to stop the flow.

Nothing?

     Forgiveness is God's invention for coming to terms with a world in which, despite their best intentions, people are unfair to each other and hurt each other deeply.  he began by forgiving us.  And he invites us all to forgive each other.

     It is ten times harder for an ordinary person, whom nobody is watching, to forgive and forget.  Forgiving is love's toughest work, and love's biggest risk.  If you twist it into something it is never meant to be, it can make you a doormat or an insufferable manipulator.  Forgiving seems almost unnatural.  Our sense of fairness tells us people should pay for the wrong they do.  But forgiving is love's power to break nature's rule.  When we forgive we ride the crest of love's cosmic wave; we walk in stride with God.  And we heal the hurt we never deserved.

     I remember I once watched a young boy about to take his first lesson in water-skiing.  He was bobbing up and down in the water, ski top pointed up and ahead.  His brother and soon to be sister inlaw were in the speed boat calling out some last-minute instructions.  He didn't get into too much detail because the young boy insisted that it would be easier to get up on one ski then with two.  His brother was fustrated with him and let him try with one ski.  Then, with a roar, the boat took off.  The tow rope went taut.

     At first it didn't look like the young boy would make it up.  But slowly, like some kind of glistening phoenix, he emerged from the water.  He was up.  I could see him smiling.  He went around that Maitland lake about three and a half times.  Then, in almost the reverse motion of how the boy had risen above the water, he disappeared back into it.  It didn't look like a bad spill.

     The speedboat raced back around to pick him up.  I waited and watched to see his small head pop up above the waves set off by his first nosedive--but none appeared.  I saw why at the moment his brother did.  The boy was still holding on to the tow rope!  He was being dragged behind the very boat that was trying to speed to his rescue.  Assessing the situation in a glance, his brother immediately cut the engines.  A second later the young boy's soaked but smiling face raised itself out of the water and looked up to his brother for the next instructions.  His brother smiled back and said, "Dude, I forgot to tell you one very important point about water-skiing.  When you fall, you must remember to let go of the rope!"  They all laughed out loud at his lighthearted lesson because the need to let go was so obvious.

     I remember this incident so well because I now realize the impression it is now forming on me.  I know that the reason why this young boy didn't let go of the tow rope wasn't that he wanted to hold on to it.  No, he held on because he didn't know what else to do during those frightening moments he was being dragged through the water.  For him, the thought of letting go wasn't an option at that moment.  Instead, his mind was completely crowded with other competing thoughts and feelings, such as: "I hope no one else saw me make a fool of myself!  What could have gone wrong?  How could I be so stupid?  My brother was right, I should have used two skis."

     The instinctive and naturally intelligent thought that was telling him to let go couldn't get through all of this inner clamor.  It was being blocked by a flood of misplaced and dangerous false self-concern.  The reason I can report this event and it's details with such certainty is that I was the young boy in the story, the boy who didn't let go.  It was the first of many lessons in my own life about the secret and self-defeating inner forces that make a person hold onto something that he'd be better off letting go.

     We all need to learn to let go; let go of everything that drags us through unpleasant relationships and events; let go of those painful thoughts and feelings that sink our spirits with weary, false self-concerns. 

"SOME OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THINGS

	ARE NOT PERFECT AS WE EXPECT

A ROSE IN ALL IT'S SPLENDER

	STILL HAS THORNS TO PRICK

A SWAN IN ALL IT'S GRACE

	WILL CHASE YOU AWAY

THE SUN WITH ALL IT'S WARMTH

	CAN'T BE FELT FOR TOO LONG

SO WITH ALL THESE BEAUTIFUL THINGS

	THAT ARE NOT PERFECT AS WE EXPECT

HOW CAN I LOVE SOMEONE SO BEAUTIFUL

	AND EXPECT HER TO BE PERFECT

BUT WHO AM I TO SAY

	THAT THEY ARE NOT PERFECT

BECAUSE THEY ARE WHAT THEY ARE

	NO MORE AND NO LESS

A ROSE DOESN'T WANT TO BE GRABBED

	BUT CAN BE GENTLY HELD

A SWAN DOESN'T WANT TO BE RAN UP UPON

	BUT CAN BE APPROACHED WHEN GIVEN SOME SPACE

THE SUN'S WARMTH CAN BE ENJOYED

	BUT WITH MODERATION

AND SOMEONE WHO I LOVE SO MUCH LIKE YOU

	THAT SHARES ALL THESE QUALITIES AND MORE

SHOULD BE TREATED WITH SUCH

	SO NEITHER CAN BE HURT"