forgiveness

Some days God reminds us how much we need him

Some days, God likes to remind us how much we need him. He lets us get just far enough away from him that we fall and have to return to him for forgiveness and guidance. Today was one of those days for me. 

The morning started out normal enough. I woke up a few minutes later than I would like, but it didn’t seem like a big deal. I went downstairs to make my daughter breakfast and, while doing so, I listened to a podcast about Thomas Aquinas. 

As I made my daughter’s ham, egg, and cheese sandwich, I remembered my wife telling me the night before that there were chicken quesadillas prepped in the refrigerator for my daughter’s lunch. All I needed to do was to heat one up, put it in a container, and put it in her lunchbox. But this is where things went sideways.

My next thought after I remembered what my wife said was, “She can take care of that. I’m making breakfast. She can get up and make lunch. It’s time for my prayer hour and I have an appointment later.” 

I finished making my daughter’s breakfast, set it on the table for her, and then sat down to for prayer. I started by reading a little bit about the history of Saint Patrick. After that, I read the Catholic Mass readings for the day. Then, holding the rosary my friend gave me, I said one Our Father and three Hail Marys and then sat in silent prayer for twenty minutes. 

While I was in silent prayer, I heard my daughter’s first alarm go off and then I brought my mind back to God. A few minutes passed and I heard her second alarm go off and then I brought my mind back to God. Then she came downstairs and I brought my mind back to God. I heard her sit down to eat, open a book, and thought, “That book is going to make her eat slowly and she’s going to be late,” and then I turned my mind back to God. 

When I was done with silent prayer, I opened my eyes and started to write my Meditations of a Gentle Warrior blog post for the day. While I was doing this, my wife came down and made my daughter’s lunch. She then told my daughter to close her book and finish eating because she was taking too long and was going to be late. 

After my daughter finished her breakfast and my wife packed her lunch, we all started scurrying to get my daughter out the door on time. She went upstairs to brush her teeth and, when she came down, it was time to go, but her hair still wasn’t brushed or tied up and her agenda book wasn’t signed. Her mother was starting to get irritated and I could feel the tension building. 

As my wife helped my daughter with her hair, I grabbed my daughter’s agenda book to sign it for her. I was getting flustered because it was time to go and all of this should have been done earlier. I also knew in the back of my mind that, if I had only been a little bit less selfish and prepped my daughter’s lunch for her while I was in the kitchen, my wife could have done her hair while she was eating, and we’d all be less frustrated. 

After I signed her agenda book, I struggled to get it closed and, in my frustration, I lost my cool and tossed the agenda book on the couch in my daughter’s direction. I then grumbled at both of them that if they woke up earlier we wouldn’t all be in such a hurry. 

The truth is, however, that I woke up late this morning, not them. It wasn’t too late, but it was late enough that I had to do my silent prayer while my daughter was getting ready and eating breakfast which, while doable, is not ideal. And then there was the selfish attitude I had about my daughter’s lunch. 

I got my daughter out to the bus stop and she made it in time to catch the bus. After the bus drove away, I started on my morning walk. I was about a half a mile down the road when my wife called to talk about what happened earlier. We agreed that we need to do better and came up with some strategies for doing so, and then went on about our respective days. 

I should say that I am extremely grateful for the fact that my wife and I talk through these things the way we do. Even when it’s hard or we don’t know how to be, we both want to be better spouses and better parents. These little five minute talks after a less than perfect morning where mistakes were made goes a long way to that end. 

After I got home from my walk, a friend of mine who is struggling with some personal issues texted me and we shared back and forth about forgiveness and the process by which God expects us to do so, even when we have been truly hurt by someone. Somewhere in that text thread, I explained how I am constantly reminded of how imperfect I am and that these reminders help me to be more forgiving of others. I went on to say, “I threw my daughter’s school notebook in her direction today RIGHT AFTER I FINISHED MY MORNING MEDITATION. My God do I need God’s help!” 

With this awareness of my own sinful nature, that even around my morning prayers I can be selfish toward my wife and impatient toward my daughter, how can I possibly hold a grudge against someone else for hurting my feelings or living in an ungodly way? Without God, I am nothing. Without him, I refuse to make my daughter lunch because, “That’s my wife’s problem and I already made her breakfast.” Without the Lord, I am selfish, I lose my temper over stupid things, and I throw notebooks. 

Clearly, there is more work to do and more praying to be done. What a blessing it is to see these things today though. By God allowing our flaws to come to light, we are afforded the opportunity to turn back to him for help, forgiveness, and a better way forward. Just like distractions in meditation are an opportunity to turn our mind back to God, mistakes are an opportunity to turn our hearts back to God. 

Later in the day, when my daughter got off the bus, we talked about what happened in the morning. I apologized to her for throwing her agenda book on the couch and told her the strategies her mother and I discussed for doing better in the morning. Unprompted, when my wife got home from work, she had the same conversation with our daughter but apologizing for her side of things and explaining how we can do better tomorrow. 

I don’t know if these little talks are necessary or if my daughter “gets it,” but as far as I can recall, I never had them as a kid that and they feel like healing. It’s important for her to know that we make mistakes and when we do, that we own up to them, apologize, and try to make things right. It’s even more important, however, for my daughter to know that her parents are working together on her behalf and that God is helping us to do so because we can’t do it without him. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Resentment is an attempt to deny someone else salvation

Resentments are like a wedge in our hearts. They separate us from God and our fellows. In fact, resentments are an attempt to play God by not accepting what has happened as being in accordance with his will. By holding onto a resentment against someone else, we are essentially saying that we have the right to withhold love from them, that we have the power to withhold mercy from them, and that we have the desire to withhold salvation from them. 

In this way, holding onto a resentment against someone is an attempt to cut them off from God. It is to deny them love, mercy, and forgiveness. And this, according to Jesus is tantamount to murder. “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’” he said, “But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to [the same] judgment [as one who has actually committed murder] (Matt 5:21-22).” 

When we are angry, we forget that only God has the power to withhold salvation. Only God has the authority to withhold mercy. And no matter what a person does, God never stops loving them. These are his gifts to give and we can do nothing to deserve or to earn them. They are freely given and we are free to accept or deny them. What we are not free to do, however, is to deny love, mercy, or for someone else, for we are not God. 

On the contrary, Jesus said, “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute you (Matthew 5:43-44, NIV).” He commands that, no matter the harm and no matter how many times we are hurt or offended, we are to forgive “not seven times, but seventy-seven times (Matt 18:21-22).” To hold a resentment, therefore, is not only to play God, but also to reject his teachings and deny his authority. 

Tragically, in our imperfection, in our flaws and brokenness, we are going to fall short of Jesus’s commandments. We will not always “Love the Lord God with all our heart… soul and… mind.” Nor will we always “Love [our] neighbor[s] as [ourselves] (Matt 22:37-39).” But we can pray. 

When we find ourselves being resentful toward someone, we can confess it to God and another person. We can pray and ask God to forgive us and help us show this person forgiveness, love, and mercy. And we can “go and be reconciled with them (Matt 5:23)” so that we can approach God with a open heart and a clean conscience. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Committing murder in my heart on the highway

Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. (Matthew 5:21-22, NIV).” 

I was running late for jiu-jitsu this morning, not too late, but late enough to be in a hurry, and I was getting annoyed by slow drivers and traffic lights. At one point, I even honked at the driver in front me for not turning when the light was green. It became clear to me later, after being stuck behind him for a while, that he was most likely lost and trying to figure out where he was going, and my attempts to hurry him along were not helping. 

As I got on the highway, I moved over to the left lane so that I could get where I was going more quickly. That is to say, I was speeding. Unfortunately for me, there was a big white pickup truck with shiny chrome wheels ahead of me in the left lane who was content to go just fast enough that no one could pass him and just slow enough to get on my nerves. 

The further I drove, the more frustrated I became. It was’t just the pickup truck in front of me. Everyone around me was annoying me. Either they weren’t going fast enough or they weren’t using their turn signal or I didn’t like the color of their car or they had a bumper sticker that offended me. It became increasingly clear to me that either something was wrong with everyone else or something was wrong with me. 

Just then, the thought came to me, “How many people have you murdered in your heart today while driving to jiu-jitsu?” I knew this was a reference to Matthew 5:21-22. I also knew that it was a lot of people. In fact, it was too many people to count. 

Then, as my mind tends to do, I extrapolated this out to all of the people I had ever been angry at or annoyed by any time I have ever driven anywhere for the thirty or so years that I’ve been driving. For many years, as a coffee equipment technician, I essentially drove for a living, meaning I was on the road for many hours a day encountering many hundreds of drivers each day, a lot of whom were not driving how I wanted. 

With this in mind, it occurred to me that, if I were to take Jesus seriously, and I do, I am guilty of murdering many hundreds, really thousands of people in my heart. Being subject to judgement by God for my anger, as if it were in fact murder, I realized that I have a very severe punishment coming my way. God being the just God that he is, I will eventually have to pay for these crimes of the heart against my brothers and sisters. 

But God is not merely a just God. He is also a loving and merciful God. He knows that we cannot possibly live up to his perfect standards nor perfectly obey his commandments. The entire Old Testament proves this over and over again. And so after many attempts to reconcile with us and forgive us for our transgressions, God finally made the greatest sacrifice a father can make, and he sent his own son to die for every wrong we have ever done or will ever do so that, through Jesus Christ, we may be forgiven once and for all. 

This knowledge, once accepted as the truth it is, should make us nicer. It should make us so grateful and so humbled that we could not possibly sin against the Lord ever again. And yet, we are selfish, broken, and extremely short-sighted creatures for whom nothing is ever really good enough. 

No matter what God does for us, including sacrificing his own son so that we may live, we still have lapses in love, compassion, and goodness. I, for one, had many this morning on my short drive to jiu-jitsu. Somehow, because I was late for class and in a hurry, I completely forgot that I have been saved through Jesus Christ’s death on the cross and I opted instead to get angry at every driver who crossed my path. 

Sometimes I think God allows us to have these moments of weakness just so that we can see how broken we are and how much we need him to make us whole. While this incident and this realization resulted in my praying for both forgiveness and for love and patience for my fellows, I know that this will not be the last time I get angry at another driver and commit murder in my heart. I hope and pray, however, that these incidents become fewer and farther between as God heals my heart and forms me into the type of person he would have me be. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Acknowledge the hurt is real so that you can heal

The first step in healing is acknowledging that, in fact, we have been wronged. That the hurt is real. That a debt is owed. That we are in pain. That an injustice has been done. But this is only the first step. 

If we are to heal, we must then be willing, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, to free the person who wronged us from their debt for the sake of our own soul. For the sake of our own peace. For the sake of our own joy. For the sake of those we love and serve. 

We cannot do this alone. Only God can transform this pain, this very real and justified pain, into healing, but we must be willing to sacrifice our suffering, our pride, and our resentment, at the altar of His love. We must be willing to let go of this debt we are owed, to release it, to release our debtor into God’s hands. 

Justice will be done, but it is not ours to do. We will all pay the price for our part in things when we someday face Him. But for now, we are called to let our debtors go, to heal, and to move on with the help of God and community, and with the love that can transform all pain and all suffering into purpose. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

A perfectly imperfect reminder of our perfect imperfections

A couple of years ago, my mother gave my daughter a four-pack of friendship bracelets. My daughter gave me one of them and somehow lost the other three. They were supposed to all say, “Best Friend,” which is kind of strange if you think about it. Is it really possible to have four best friends? We are lucky to have four good friends, let alone best friends. But that’s not really the point. 

Anyway, all four bracelets were supposed to say, “Best Friend,” but I noticed that the one my daughter gave me actually said, “Bsst Friend.” It took me a while to notice it, but when I did, I asked her about it and whether it had special meaning. My assumption was that it was meant to be that way. 

She told me that it was supposed to say, “Best Friend” and that “Bsst Friend” was a mistake. I told her that I loved it anyway and, in fact, I liked it even more because it was unique. “I bet no one else has a Bsst Friend bracelet from their daughter,” I said. Her response took me completely by surprise. 

She said, “I guess your bracelet is just like us.” 

“What do you mean?” I asked. 

“Well, it’s imperfect, but it’s still beautiful, just like we are still beautiful even though we are imperfect” she replied. “Nothing is really perfect anyway. So your bracelet is kind of like a reminder of that. Right, daddy?” 

“Yes, dear,” I responded. “No one and nothing is perfect except for God and, even though we do the best we can, we will always fall short. But that’s okay because we are still beautiful and God loves us even in our imperfectness. Thank you for the bracelet, my dear. I’ll wear my Bsst Friend bracelet proudly to remind me of you and how much I love you.” 

“I love you, daddy,” she said with a big smile and gave me a hug. 

I still wear my Bsst Friend bracelet quite often. I sometimes get funny looks because it’s a rainbow bracelet and I am a pretty big, rather imposing looking guy with a bald head, a beard, and signs of cauliflower ear from years of jiu-jitsu, even though I’m actually just a big, gentle panda. I think a lot of people assume it has some hidden meaning, and I suppose it does. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Divine mic drop

“‘You are God’s Beloved!’ I hope that you can hear these words as spoken to you with all the tenderness and force that love can hold. My only desire is to make these words reverberate in every corner of your being ‘You are the Beloved…’ The voice that speaks from above and from within whispers softly or declares loudly: ‘You are my Beloved son or daughter, on you my favor rests.’”
-Henri Nouwen, Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith (2006, p 29)

As I read this during my morning prayers, I found myself thinking about people that I love and praying for them. I sat there in silence wishing that my daughter could hear and know these words as true, that she is God’s beloved. I thought about my wife and wished, in the depth of her being, she could feel these words, that she is God’s beloved daughter and on her his favor rests. Then a friend came to mind and I wished the same for her. This continued as different people for whom I have a special place in my heart popped into my head. 

Right then, mid-thought, a voice cut through all of the prayers, thoughts, and images that were previously running through my mind. This voice said, “You wish this for everyone else, but why can’t you hear it yourself?” Taken aback, I sat there for what felt like an eternity, but was most likely only a few minutes, meditating on this question that went straight to my heart. 

“Am I actually God’s beloved?” I asked myself. “Is that really true? Am I really worthy of his love like that? Why don’t I know it? Why can’t I feel it? What is it in me that is keeping me from accepting this powerful truth that I so freely wish for others? Why do I exclude myself from this miraculous gift? What is it you are holding onto that you believe is preventing you from being worthy of his love and forgiveness?”

In this brief moment of thought and prayer, my life flashed before my mind’s eye and I was shown a deep truth that I had been previously unwilling to see. It’s not that God didn’t love me, but that I was unable or unwilling to accept his love. In wanting others to experience the abundance of God’s grace and mercy, he was able to show me that I was holding myself back from also experiencing it. They are God’s beloved children, but I am also. 

Now what exactly does this mean and how will my life and perspective change after having this realization gently and lovingly forced upon me? I have no idea, but I do know that I am willing to allow God to show me. I am willing to let him love me. I am willing to be loved, to be his beloved. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Don’t touch the stove

A manager of mine once told me that managing people is a lot like raising children. At the time, I didn’t have any children, but he was a good, sincere man and a very important mentor for me, so I took his word for it. He explained that, while many employees would be great and should be treated accordingly, there would always be people who would test the limits of my patience and kindness. 

“Some people are going to see how far they can go before getting in trouble,” he explained. “They are like a child reaching out to touch a hot stove. At first, you say in a stern, but kind way, ‘Please don’t touch the stove. It’s hot. It will burn you.’ But they keep reaching for the stove. So now your tone changes, becoming harsher, ‘I said don’t touch the stove. It’s hot. It will burn you.’ But their hand gets closer still. Now, you are getting frustrated because your attempts to be kind are being ignored. ‘Hey!’ you exclaim, ‘I told you not to touch the stove! You’re going to get burned!’ In spite of this, they just keep reaching for it. Finally, you realize that you are wasting your breath. You have done and said everything you can to help them, but they simply will not be helped. Discouraged and annoyed, you say, ‘Fine. Touch the stove. See what happens, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.'” 

Not only was he right that some employees are just this stubborn and defiant, but he was also right that parenting is also like this from time to time. Some people simply need to learn the hard way. They need to get burned before they will believe the stove is hot. For whatever reason, they are unwilling or unable to learn from the mistakes of others. They have to touch the stove themselves. 

Unfortunately, all too often, I’m “some people.” In an attempt to guide me in the right direction and to save me from unnecessary suffering, God gives me all sorts of warning signs. Like a loving father raising a stubborn child, he tries to teach me how to live a good life, but I resist, insisting that I can do things my way. He tells me that my ways are flawed, to trust him, and that he will not lead me astray, but my pride and selfishness frequently stop me from hearing him. 

I keep pushing until he finally says, “Fine. Touch the stove. See what happens, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Inevitably, I get burned and then turn to him for help. And like a loving father, he is always there to comfort and teach me when I am willing to listen, even if sometimes he lets me feel the pain I caused myself a little longer than I would like. 

God does not save us from the consequences of our actions. We have to live with them. That is our cross to bear. He does love us enough, however, to try to warn us before we choose poorly, but we don’t always listen. So often, we exercise our free will by pushing the boundaries of his grace and breaking his heart. And yet, if we repent, if we turn back to God, we will be forgiven and welcomed home like a runaway child because he wants nothing more than for us to choose him like he has chosen us. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Be right or be free

During the recent snowstorm we had, my wife unknowingly parked in a parking space that someone else had shoveled out for herself. By the time she parked there, almost every parking space in our complex had been cleared out, so it seemed harmless to take whatever space was available. But when she returned to her car, there was an angry note on her windshield. 

The note read something like, “I don’t appreciate you parking in the parking space that I shoveled out for myself. I had to get surgery and was counting on being able to park in that space when I got back. That’s why I put the orange cone there.” 

The problem is that, when my wife parked there, there was no orange cone. It was simply one of many empty parking spaces. She also had no way of knowing that the person who shoveled it out was having surgery. Nor was this an assigned or handicapped parking space. It was truly an innocent misunderstanding, but this misunderstanding created an unfortunate chain reaction.

Anger is a funny thing. It often seems as if it’s contagious. For example, my wife unknowingly parked in a parking space that another woman believed belonged to her. The woman got angry and left an inflammatory note on my wife’s car. When my wife read the note, she got angry. Feeling she was unjustly criticized, I then got angry on my wife’s behalf. But I soon began to see the absurdity of all of this anger over a parking space. 

As I sat with this thought for a while, it occurred to me that resentment is really a distraction. In fact, it’s a deadly distraction in that it separates us from God. It prevents us from looking to him for guidance and listening for his quiet voice. Resentment convinces us that our feelings are more important what Jesus’s says is the greatest commandments of all, which is to love God with all of our heart, soul, and mind, and to love our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:36-40 NIV). To willfully hold onto a resentment is to defy God himself. 

And so we have a decision to make. We can either be angry or we can be obedient. We can hold onto resentments or we can make room in our hearts to hear God’s voice. We can be right, at least in our own minds, or we can forgive and be free. As it says in the book of Matthew 6:14-15, if we forgive others, God will forgive us, but if we choose not to forgive, we will also not be forgiven. A heart filled with anger has no room for love and, since we are told that God is love, that means that a heart filled with anger has no room for God (1 John 4:8). 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Excitement frightens me

Excitement frightens me. It makes me nervous. It’s like I’m afraid of anticipating good things happening to or for me.

I’ve been this way for as long as I can remember. It’s as if I can’t believe things could possibly go well for me without a catch. I alway talk myself down from being too excited about anything.

I can’t even accept a compliment without brushing it off, explaining it away, or making it awkward. When someone tells me I’ve done something well, I find a way to downplay it or to look for where I could have done better. I can’t even celebrate my wins because something inside me simply won’t let me.

Maybe I’ve been let down too many times. Maybe I’ve been tricked, deceived, or disappointed too many times. Maybe I just don’t believe I’m worthy of good things without some kind of price being attached to them.

Whatever the reason or reasons, this is no way to live. I need to allow myself to be excited, to accept a compliment, and to celebrate my wins. I don’t know how, but I need to give myself a break.