Will, Grace, and Forgiveness

I blog infrequently. I don't have a slew of people who follow me that crave my opinion, and because of this, my blogs are not much more than status updates, or op-ed pieces where I'm guaranteed to make the column.

Yesterday, I was digging a bed out in our back yard for a garden. Gardening is therapeutic, because it usually brings toxic thought from the previous week to the front of my consciousness, and allows me to work through, find a resolution for, or table complex issues.

There were many thoughts, but one that I wanted to touch on was this:

I want to thank an old friend, Will, for a very nice blog entry that he wrote about me. Please find it here. Did you subscribe? Please do.

I wanted to reply to it, but I couldn't. Anything that I would have said about it would have been no more than a self-aggrandizing commentary on something that deserves a response far more eloquent. So, that makes this commentary nothing more.

I wanted to expound on some things that he presented in his Blog (see I am wholly unoriginal - I have to comment on someone else's blog. Perhaps one day I'll get better).

I previously mentioned forgiveness. It is a tough, tough pill to swallow. People can forgive you all day long, but until you are able to accept it, the anchor of the incident/sin/transgression will always, always be there.

There's a pretty good song by Audio Adrenaline, called "Ocean Floor", which has the following lyrics:

They're all behind you

They'll never find you

There on the ocean floor

Your sins are forgotten

They're on the bottom

Of the ocean floor

That's pretty deep, no? As a human, I have a hard time with that, because "Gone but not forgotten" is a huge thing with me. The memory makes a deep imprint, and that someone is able to do what I usually can't makes me very, very ashamed. If God can give me that kind of grace, shouldn't I be able to do the same for others - especially when they can do that for me?

I would think so.

And here's been the tricky thing for me. Every time that I have blogged/facebook'd about something deeper than Pixar and Calvin and Hobbes (in case you didn't get the Bill Watterson reference), I have been tested on it. Severely. When I did the "25 Things" survey in Facebook, everything that was a profession was tested. And soon, too. I professed the greatness of my Wife and I was tested (not like what you're thinking, soap-opera lovers), I professed the greatness of my friends at my church and was tested, and I opined on many other things, where I was forced to, perhaps, re-calibrate my opinion.

So before I get too far off base, I want to bring it back to Grace and the Grace that Will showed to me. He talked about how through my fear of surgery I taught him something. Well, from him, I am the recipient of grace. I reacquainted with someone (through Facebook) that really had no reason to rekindle a friendship. I asked for forgiveness and had no expectation that I would receive it.

So what?

I was forgiven, and in the process was told that I was revealing something to the forgiver? That is Grace personified.

And one line in my "25 Things" note still holds true (as do the rest of them):

"If I hurt you in the past, you have no idea how sorry I truly am".

I am grateful that I can't see the bottom of the ocean floor.