Musings

I’m realizing, in my wise old age, how many things I used to care about but don’t anymore. I’m realizing that the only people who belong in my life are the ones who can be honest, the ones who can refrain from expressing judgment despite the sometimes intense temptation to, and the ones who understand the power of forgiveness and the freedom it brings.

What many people don’t seem to grasp is that forgiving someone else is not simply for the good of the other person, it is for the good of the person doing the forgiving. When you can open your heart to someone and tell them, “It’s OK that you messed up,” you are freeing yourself from the grudge that would otherwise weigh you down like a ball and chain for the rest of your life. Forgiveness is about the forgiver. It is for the forgiver. The additional benefits for others are nice, but the main point is to free the forgiver.

And it has recently hit me that continuing to try and fix something or someone who can’t be fixed makes me just as bad as the situation or the person who is unfix-able. Recently, I witnessed that all the love in the world could not save a dying child, and the parallel was made in my head that neither can all the love in the world fix an unfix-able person or situation. And it does not make me a failure for giving up. It does not speak ill of my character that sometimes I must walk away for my own good.

I hear the screaming and the shouting of someone who is throwing a tantrum because they know I am gone and they know there is nothing they can do. But just as I turn my back on my 5 year-old to teach her a lesson, I must do the same in this situation though it tears at my heart every bit as strongly as my daughter’s tears.

If you are a born lover, a born fixer, a born helper, giving up and walking away in a futile situation are like a foreign language to you. Deciding that someone is beyond your help hurts you just as much as it will hurt the person you are leaving behind. It is with an aching clarity, however, that this MUST be done in certain situations; because throwing seemingly logical solutions at a brick wall does no good and it never will. Sometimes, you must let the wall be.

My eyes, however, still fill with water because although I know the truth, at least for a little while, it will feel like failure. But once the smoke clears, and full vision returns, I will know that I made the right decision for me.

These are the decisions that shape us; that make our lives what we want them to be. They are painful at times and heartbreaking at others, but they are necessary because doing nothing comes with a much higher cost. Nothing in life is free…