Dear friend,
Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Until seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I don’t tell you until seven times, but, until seventy times seven.
I keep circling back to a woman I worked with years ago. She took credit for something I built and I said it was fine. It was not fine. I rehearsed the argument I never gave her in the shower for two years. Two years. I would win it every time, too, in my head, and still wake up tired from it.
This week I keep thinking about how working through forgiveness shows up in ordinary places, not just the big betrayals. It shows up in a shower argument that never ends because you never let it. Matthew 18 has that exchange about how many times a person should forgive someone, and the number given back is so large it stops being a number you could count toward. That part stuck with me. Not because it makes the ache smaller. Because it seems to admit the ache will come back more than once and asks for more than once anyway.
I am not going to tell you where you should be with this. I do not know your particular version of it. What I want to know is smaller. What does the ache actually feel like when it shows up for you?
A prayer
God, You know the exact shape of what she is carrying and I don't. Meet her in the tired, circling part of this. Do not rush her past it. Amen.