Get Out of Your Prison!

It's Spring Break. I should be writing about hummingbirds and daffodils, which are here in abundance these few thousand miles from Kodiak (glory!!). But I'm writing about prison instead. I was there last night. In my semi-sleep. I was remembering something very painful that happened 2 years ago. I was plotting a way to hurt this person back. (What, me? The woman who wrote Forgiving Our Fathers and Mothers: Finding Freedom from Hate and Hurt??  Yes, me. I need to forgive and be forgiven as often as I need my daily bread.) 

But I wasn't there in prison alone. Someone else was there with me. Just before I left Kodiak, someone sent me a message----secretly. Anonymously. A passage highlighted from a text. Who? Why? I pondered it for awhile. And then I knew.    

I knew who sent it. I’ll call her Debra. I know Debra’s story. And, strangely, Debra has sent this to me not about my own sin this time, though God knows there is plenty to choose from. (She has let me know about these as well.) But this time someone else’s mistakes and sins. Debra hopes I can pressure a friend we hold in common, I’ll call her Sheila, to confess her wrong-doings against Debra, so Debra can be healed and move on. This is not Debra’s first attempt to extract a confession from Sheila, through me.

I write this now to her and to all of us who are stuck sending desperate notes and jabs anonymously from an underground prison. Because most of us have been there---or are there now. In one form or another----we are there waiting. Waiting for those who beat us, who tricked us, who yelled at us, who spilled their human failings upon us . . . we are waiting for them to come forward out of the shadows of the past,

waiting for them to fall to their knees in sorrowful confession for what they have done.  Ah, the sweetness of that moment! To see them humbled! To be vindicated! Who doesn't want that?

And while we are waiting, we are not standing still, of course!  We’re  working very hard at hiding. We’re nursing our hurts and bruises. We’re busy making poor decisions in other areas of our lives. We huddle there in that cell …..  "safe." 

But what happens there, in that safe place of memory, where we can relive the bruising and gashing as long and as often as we want? The worst thing possible. We switch places. We become the torturers exacting our own sad form of "justice" from our offender. 

And---we're going to keep at it until that person comes back and apologizes, confessing her crimes against us. If she would just do that, then look who I could be!! Look who she's keeping me from becoming!!

I could be this lovely Christian who forgives as she has been forgiven.

I could move on with my life.

I could be whole and happy again.

I could love God again.

I could be myself again.

You can be fully yourself now. You can be more than yourself by forgiving. Instead, you're holding yourself hostage, pinning all your hopes and your life to come on a person so much more broken than you are. On a person who has herself borne other’s anger and failures.

Dear Friend. Listen. For God’s sake and all of our sake’s, pry your hand open and look what is already there in your hand. Look. Yes, it’s a key.  You’ve held it in your hand from the very start of all this.

That key was given to you the moment you found Christ and he set you free from your sin-bent heart, when he freed you from your selfishness and wont to use and hurt others. Just as he did for me. For all of us. We are all the same this way.

We once walked out of those barred walls, rejoicing. But we’ve crept back in, under our own power. And locked the door behind us. And wailed in our misery, “Let me out!”

I cannot say it any plainer.  Let yourself out of the prison you have built.

The prison is real. Ravensbruck was a real prison as well, a Nazi concentration camp for women, where 92,000 died . . .  A prayer was found here in the clothing of a child's body, 

"O Lord, remember not only 

the men and woman of good will, 

but also those of ill will. 

But do not remember all of the suffering 

they have inflicted upon us:

Instead remember the fruits we have borne

 because of this suffering—

our fellowship, our loyalty to one another, 

our humility, our courage, our generosity,

 the greatness of heart that has grown from this trouble.

When our persecutors come to be judged by you, 

let all of these fruits that we have borne 

be their forgiveness."

I don't know if I could ever be like Christ enough to pray this prayer. But I can write these words:  Through Christ, 

we’ve been given all that we need to be whole people, people of peace, a forgiving people who won’t allow others’ sins to crush or smother us or imprison us.

This morning, when I woke up from whatever kind of sleep that was, because of Christ, I forgave him again, this man who so grieved me two years ago. I opened his cell door---and mine. And I thought of Debra, prayed that she too could open that door . . .

Dear Debra, I pray this for you. 

Dear Readers, I pray this for you. 

Dear me, I need this too. 

Walk on out of those bars and walls. 

Do you feel the wind on your cheek, 

the sun in your eyes, 

the love of God in your heart? 

Do you know how much he has forgiven you?

Do you see how sad and beautiful your offender is now?

*Would you help me help others out of prison?I will send a book to any bloggers who repost this on their blog. Email me here to let me know: leslieleylandfields@gmail.com or FB me with the link.