Studio52Seven

I sat on my bed, gazing at my laptop. Or perhaps it was gazing at me. “Write something. Anything!” it summoned. This was not a writer’s block. My mind was simply overcharged. I felt like a pressure cooker with a faulty valve. All churnings and steam trapped in. I knew instinctively how bombs were made. In my mind, I also pictured the loosely bolted and wearied wheels of an overloaded book cart noisily rolling down an uneven cobblestone road to “let off” some books by a dirt heap. “That is not me!” I protested.

But how could my heart feel so full? So… run-out-of-space? I stack my books neatly, like one defragmenting a hard drive. Like a well-manicured bookshelf, I am careful to arrange the happenings of my day: the good, the hurts, and the ambiguities in very nice piles. Sortable piles. Like a robot, I can retrieve the files that have my wife’s disrespectful attitude from ten years ago and my boss’ indiscretion five days back. I do feel proud of my organizational skill. And to be honest, I do not hate the people in those files or any other person for that matter. I love them. The only problem is that the holding bay, my heart, is bursting at the seams. And worse, I feel poisoned with a smoldering, mind and pen crippling venom. How in the world did I get here?

“…live a life worthy of the calling …. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.”

Ephesians 4:1,2

Superb last phrase. And that has been my basis for “stacking,” even the hurts and the pains. Those were meant to be trashed. Bearing or forbearing, it appears is meant to help me make allowance for my subordinate’s insolence of yesterday and how he may treat me tomorrow. A mechanism to help me shift my perceptions so that other people and their idiosyncrasies can find room in my otherwise choking world. My everyday, all-purpose holding bay. That is just what it is meant to be. Somewhere and sometime, the experience is supposed to be sorted so that I can make sense of the situation, and then ship it out.

The challenge, however, is that all it achieves is to serve as a place to store, sort, defragment, and stack the files on my hard drive—my heart, the source of my life’s issues. The pressure valve is spoiled, and I do not get to vent what has been processed. Could that be what people perceive and mean when they say that Patrick has a large and accommodating heart? And do not get me wrong. I think it is a good thing. We are asked to “make allowance for each other’s faults” (Col. 3:13a). However, my problem is that I stop there, it seems. The second part of that passage says “and forgive anyone who offends you” (Col. 3:13b). But I have mistaken the first part, making room, for forgiveness.

Forgiveness is what I do when I trash things. When I remove things from storage, pull them out of the archive and shred them permanently. I am learning that though I have a great capacity to bear and forbear, the files are not meant to sit in the archives forever, nor does forbearance automatically translate to forgiveness. Forbearance helps us to manage the day and all that it brings; forgiveness helps us to clean out the room so that tomorrow will start on a fresh note. Perhaps that is what my mind needs after all, for the ink to start flowing again.

I am learning that though I have a great capacity to bear and forbear, the files are not meant to sit in the archives forever, nor does forbearance automatically translate to forgiveness.

Lord, I can’t wait to exhale. Help me find the courage today to step over the threshold of forbearance and shred those stacks permanently. Amen.