RECONCILIATION IS AN accounting term that implies a balance between credits and debts with nothing due and nothing owed. Reconciliation with friends or family, for example, occurs when debts can be satisfied—through repayment, retribution or forgiveness. The act of repayment, retribution or forgiveness is the credit given that moves the debt to a zero balance.
If the need for love, respect, significance, and security were not as important to us, let’s say, as water and air, reconciliation would be much easier.
But they are important to us.
In fact, they are critical to our survival, so much so that we will insist on repayment or retribution in order to gain whatever measure of love, respect, significance, and security we have lost. The need for these things is so important to us that the other option—forgiveness—escapes us because it is counterintuitive.
If someone takes something valuable from you, forgiveness without repayment or retribution seems like losing, unless of course, you are the one needing forgiveness.
When you were a child, you may have been forced to forgive others so that you could get on with playing, but if your heart and mind didn’t agree, your words were empty, and you weren’t reconciled in your spirit.
After a lifetime of this behavior, the value of forgiveness could easily be diminished.
The problem, as I see it, is that we need forgiveness and we need to forgive much more than we need repayment and retribution. We have amassed a lifetime of losses, and without forgiveness, those losses are like open items in one very large ledger.
Sometimes it is because of the lack of forgiveness that even when repayment has been made, or retribution has been served, the items remain open.
It may take a shift in your thinking to see the personal power you have forfeited for the sake of winning, or your unwillingness to forgive or be forgiven. But if not, I hope you will see the energy you have lost while waiting for justice.
If you want to change your behaviors today, you will have to do the work to reconcile your past.
If you want to tell me your past is unforgivable, I assure you that you would tell me the same thing a year or ten years from now, but you will do so with the same thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors you possess today.
If you want sustainable results from our work together, you must choose forgiveness.
Since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes from him, throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes.
Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy.
And “don’t sin by letting anger control you.” Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry, for anger gives a foothold to the devil.
Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them.
And do not bring sorrow to God’s Holy Spirit by the way you live. Remember, he has identified you as his own, guaranteeing that you will be saved on the day of redemption.
Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior.
Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.–Excerpts from Ephesians 4:21-32
This would be a good time to transfer the ledger you keep in your mind into your notebook. Make a note of the debts you think impossible to forgive.
Capture the words you may have spoken to declare, “I will never forgive this” or “I can never be forgiven for that”. These are the debts that own you, therefore stealing your personal power—but by your own choice.
Undoubtedly, your thoughts will have something to do with justice. If so, I’ll agree that forgiveness is not fair, but by now you know that life isn’t fair. The good news is that fairness is not a prerequisite, nor is it essential, to a successful life.
What you’re after is peace and harmony, the effects of love, respect, significance, and security. Are you ready to do some work? If so, let’s start at the beginning.
You were a small child—maybe as young as two years old—when you first noticed you had lost some measure of love, respect, significance or security. This is where your journey in life really began. It was the day of your awakening.
It could have been when your caregivers did not act “right” and your cries for help were not immediately answered. It could have been when your cries, which had always worked in the past, were met with a certain pain to your bottom in the form of a spanking. You could have lost what you needed when you first saw your caregivers fighting or screaming at each other, either or both of them abandoned you or died, your home burned to the ground, or you recognized the fact that you were “different”.
You could have been robbed from your seat in the center of the universe when the newest sibling arrived, your parents divorced, you were neglected, or a dominant person controlled you.
Whatever it was, something happened in your early life and you knew that something was wrong. You lost something. And you wanted it back. You wanted to be whole again. You wanted restoration.
Whatever it was that happened, you awoke to reality.
And you were afraid.
Fear entered into your life and became the catalyst that caused you to develop strategies to recover that which you had lost.
You also developed additional strategies that would save you from losing again whatever measure of love, respect, significance, and security that was taken from you. What you did not know was that some debts can never be recovered.
But now they can be reconciled.
However, in order for reconciliation to occur, one must first have a relationship. You owe me nothing and I owe you nothing if we are not in some kind of relationship. For example, if you financially subscribed to my work, we have a relationship and I now owe you something.
If I do not deliver the information that you expect to receive, I am indebted to you. I took some form of your financial security, and even if I offered your money back, I cannot return to you the time you spent reading my work.
Your only recourse will be to repay me with bad reviews or forgive me, which I hope you will do.
If you repay me with bad reviews, you may become in my debt, for with the bad reviews, I may lose much more financial security than I gained from you.
This may make you very happy, because in hurting me deeper than I’ve hurt you, you may receive a certain measure of respect or significance. Even so, we will not be reconciled, for in order for you to gain, I had to lose.
As Stephen Covey stated in his book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, win/lose or lose/win is always lose/lose. If you do not believe this to be true, try to create a space in your thinking for the possibility that it is true.
You thought like a child because you were a child.
And even though you are now an adult, you still hold onto the strategies you developed as a child. Buried in your subconscious mind and heart, the very strategies that once saved you, and gave you the impression that you were winning, are now causing you to lose what you most want out of life—a full measure of love, respect, significance, and security.
When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.–1 Corinthians 13:11
In my mind, it must have been a very small child Jesus spoke about when he said we must become like children in order to get to that place where all is well with our souls.
I think he was talking about an innocent child who had not yet encountered the blows from the fiery arrows to the heart that bring fear, shame, humiliation, disappointment, pain, or resentment.
In my mind, Jesus was saying that in order to get back that which we have lost; some measure of love, respect, significance, and security; and that which we have tried to restore; we must get back to that place of vulnerable innocence.
That place where, with eyes wide open, because of a mind and heart that trusted in something or someone greater than us, we saw life only as possibility.
That place before we first met Death.
Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.—1 Corinthians 13:11-12.
1 Corinthians 14:20, 1 Peter 4:8, 1 John 3:15,Proverbs 10:12, Matthew 7:1-5, 1 Peter 5:10, Hebrews 12:15, Mark 11:25
As always, it is my intent and hope that my words may encourage you wherever you are in your journey.
Please share your thoughts in the comments below or go to the group tab above to share your own experience. It only takes a minute of your time and your words may help others.
If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.–Jesus(Mark 4:23)
