Wednesday, January 2, 2013

There's A Fine Line Between Love & Hate


 "To forgive is to set a prisoner free & discover that the prisoner was you." 
- Louis B. Smedes

Well, my first day back at work for 2013 was a good one. 

Though I would have rather stayed in bed and watched Sex In The City reruns all day, I did the responsible thing and hauled my sorry fat ass into work. As expected, it started off slow and relatively uneventful. In fact, I recall wishing my first cup of coffee was a five hour energy drink!

Unexpectedly, about an hour in, I received a very sincere email. After reading it, I resigned myself to the idea that perhaps “it was time.” I’ve had a couple of things lingering over my head and one thing in particular just kept resurfacing. So, after them reaching out over my vacation, as well as a heartfelt email this morning, I decided to finally deal with it.

Today I did... and it feels good!
It’s hard for me to admit that I have had people betray me and I have let them. 

Some I have forgiven because I knew they couldn’t help themselves and some I’d knew I would never speak to again. Why? Because for all intense purpose, their betrayal unconditionally helped me decide that they didn’t deserve to be in my life. 

My situation today was one that I thought was the latter. With that in mind, here's the million dollar question... How do you know when it’s time to forgive? At what point do you bargain in good faith and call a truce? 

When I was growing up my mother use to warn me that “there’s a fine line between love and hate…” The other side of her philosophy was to never hate anyone because hatred consumes far too much energyShe'd say, "Rhondi, it's takes a lot of energy to hate someone” and she was right on all counts.

My decision today most certainly wasn't an epiphany. It was like we had decided that together we'd peel away the layers of an onion (and it took us all day to to it). The more the emails flew back and forth, the more we both realized that the feelings of hurt were not only mutual; but felt that blame belonged to the other, contributing the severity of the hard feelings. 

Because of the effort we both made today I have to have faith. I guess faith is the price you have to pay to forgive someone. Call me quirky if you must, just don’t ever call me Ma’am.  Seriously, I mean that. Call me Ma'am and I'll kill ya!

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