Perfectly Safe, Perfectly Loved
The old rules were reinstated, and the next several days were spent with the family avoiding each other and no one making eye contact or standing still for more than a minute. That one conversation used up all the communication tools the family had in reserve, angels or not.
Despite Jesse's recent hypersensitivity to her sister, she was able to see through the barrier that Julia held up in front of her, and not take her words personally. Jesse considered it a positive sign of receptivity that Julia felt compelled to attack in the face of words her soul recognized, but her ego repelled because it shattered every illusion she had spent her whole life creating and defending. She recalled a passage by Butterworth in Life is For Loving:
The love starved person is not a victim of circumstances as we have erroneously supposed but a victim of his own unconscious refusal to let the activity of love flow through him, loving himself, and thus radiating a love that builds a secure and mature self-love. The hunger for love that is so common to all persons is the ceaseless urge to "open out a way whence the imprisoned splendor may escape." However, misreading the call, we tend to go searching in the world for that which can only be found within ourselves.
Julia's argument was solid and Jesse had certainly conducted the same strategy against forgiveness herself when she questioned the compassion of the universe. There isn't one specific scenario that the system can fail to address, and looking for one is simply an avoidance technique we employ to prolong our peace. Is it heartless to admit we can stay peaceful in the midst of a tragedy? Jesse didn't think so, regardless of how unpopular such a response might appear. Human trauma is not proof that God is negligent, but that we are.
How do we forgive the big stuff? The huge mistakes. The tragedies. How do we make amends for a mistake we made? How do we forgive our abuser? What if we are that abuser? How do we forgive a parent who abandoned us? Or abandoned our child? What if we are the abandoner? How do we make it through one day after our child has been killed by a drunk driver? What if we are that drunk driver? Is forgiveness possible? How do we face these ghosts that haunt our minds, making us afraid to trust, afraid to love or afraid to live? There isn't a separate answer to every question; there is one quiet answer.
Perhaps it was time to grow up, Jesse considered, and act like the ambassador of God that I am. That we all are, only it's none of my business when anyone else accepts this assignment. Grow up and confront the one person who challenged her on everything in life. The person who knew her better than anyone, yet understood her less than everyone. The one who had been there through the same experiences only saw them with her own vision. Her sister, her soulmate, the one who could make her feel more loved and seen than she felt she deserved, then turn around and splash her with a dose of such caustic negativity and stubborn refusal to ‘wake up,' that Jesse seriously questioned the benevolence of the universe. The person she was bound to by God, literally, because she had so much to learn through her. She saw her sister in her other relationships as if attempting to work out some conflict, and recognized her own struggling as a means of staying connected to Julia through egoic measures instead of pure love. Jesse walked back in the house, and after passing through several rooms, found her sister in the upstairs bathroom replacing a broken towel rack.
"We just do. We just do, Jules." Jesse waited a minute, but Julia did not look up from her task. "What else are you gonna do, huh? Hang on to this stuff forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever, and then tomorrow and eternity are going to look like the hell we're living in now." The emotion behind Jesse's conviction gained momentum. "When are we going to change? When are we going to say, hmmm, have we actually ever given forgiveness a chance? Isn't it possible that every prophet, teacher and saint knew what the heck they were talking about? When are we going to get it that there is only one answer for every problem? After we've killed everyone we disagree with? You toss out these life situations hoping to slip up the system somehow; that the answer can't possibly be love because that's too simple. Why can't it? Why does it have to be complicated? If there were a different answer for every human dilemma, do you realize the level of chaos there would be? God, why is that so damn hard to get? Will someone please explain to me what is so wrong with the picture that love would create? It's such a great system with all these miraculous devices, and we don't use it. Instead we argue, resist, attack and destroy each other. How much more ludicrous are we willing to get? Our parents are not God and God is not our parents. God does not teach through guilt, shame and punishment. People do. Not God. You're working from a fear-based thought system because that's all you know, because that's all you were taught. Not because anybody meant you harm, but simply because they didn't know any better themselves. Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do. Go and sin no more. It doesn't say wallow in guilt and shame. It doesn't say teach them a good lesson this time. Imagine for a moment what a generation of people would look like that were raised with the idea that their mistakes are natural,
forgivable and not who they are? No one knows because we haven't done it yet, but isn't there the slightest possibility that it will look entirely different from the humans we send out into the world now? And if they aren't operating from fear than what else is there? Hmmm....yes, love. And you know what, Julia, even if I'm wrong, my wrongness is healthier and more peaceful than your rightness. And truthfully, in my heart of hearts, I don't want to be right, I want to be loved. You make it so damn hard just to love in your presence because you're always in mortal combat with whoever or whatever is in front of you. Aren't you tired? Don't forgive, then, and that will be your experience. I had to unlearn the same ideas that prevented me from accepting truth that you're facing. I had to get it that mom and dad are not God, and that their love isn't unconditional, but God's is. I still remember the first time I got that. That I was just loved. Do you know what that's like, Jules? To never question the love." Jesse hoped this last point would reach her sister's emotional jugular vein, recalling a couple of conversations that had a trace of intimacy in them, and the sisters revealed this similar quest. It brought tears to Jesse's eyes now to remember how disfigured her own heart once felt.
As if not having heard a word she said, Julia picked up the tools and walked past her sister.
©2004 StoriesByEmail.com
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