Walking around Antigua I’ll sometimes get a pebble in my shoe. Now I’m an engineer and I still don’t quite understand how this happens. My foot is constantly moving forward and somehow a pebble is dislodged from the ground and is required to move up and in the same direction as my foot and at a greater velocity in order to catch up with my shoe to enter it at the precise moment and at the precise location! It defies logic…but I digress…
Somehow and for some reason…I often get a pebble in my shoe. Once it enters my shoe, I immediately know it. I know precisely where it is and what part of my foot is now being subjected to the mild discomfort of the unwelcomed intruder. But the funny thing is…I’ll rarely stop my walk and take my shoe off and remove it! I’ll just keep walking…and thinking about the growing discomfort in my shoe. I’ll even shake my foot in hopes of moving the pebble to a different location within my shoe. Sometimes, that actually works…at least for a period of time. Then for whatever reason, the pebble reemerges from its hiding place and begins once again to make my walk less enjoyable.
Why do I write about something so trivial?
Well, because I believe that unforgiveness is much like that pebble. We all go through life…minding our own business and then…bam! That unforgiveness pebble has now entered our life. We never saw it coming and we never wanted it…it is truly an unwelcomed guest in our lives. However, like me…very few of us stop and deal with it. We just continue on with our lives and every now and then we will shake ourselves in hopes of allowing the unforgiveness to go into hiding…but like the pebble…it’s only temporary. It will reemerge and it will ultimately wear a very painful blister on our soul.
So why don’t we just stop? Why don’t we just pause our life and deal with those situations, people, and circumstances in our lives that have hurt us and if ignored…will ultimately cause us so much pain? My guess is that like me…we just want to keep moving. We mistakenly think that if we just keep walking…the pebble will miraculously find its way out of our shoe and our life…much the same way it miraculously found its way into our shoe and our life! But that rarely (if ever) happens. The net result is always the same…our walk through life is hampered… and all we receive is nothing more than a painful blister.
So how about we all just take a moment out of our lives, let’s just sit down and take off our shoes and shake them out anyway. We never know what may fall out. Then we can put them back on and get on with enjoying our walk.