Forgiving Yourself

In my final year at Columbia Theological Seminary, I took part in Clinical Pastoral Education at Grady Memorial Hospital in downtown Atlanta.  Grady is a 900-bed hosital and serve as the Trauma 1 unit for northern Georgia and also serves indigent patients in Fulton and Dekalb counties.

Through other seminary colleagues who still work there, I was recently turned onto a blog by one of the doctors who works and teaches at the hospital, reflecting on the tragedy, the pain, and the occasional beauty of working in that difficult environment of caring.

One particular post caught my attention (thanks to my wife's recommendation) called "Slip Sliding Away."  (Please note that this post contains descriptions of drug abuse and several curse words)
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When I read this post I could not help but think immediately of Jesus' parable in Luke 15:11-32 about the entitled young son, the shamed and overly forgiving father, and the jealous elder brother.  When I read about this young man in the blog post whose life had been destroyed by addiction, even when he had obviously had many chances to succeed, when I read about the mother who came to the hospital each time and took him back into her home, it was like a contemporary retelling of Jesus' parable.

With a twist.  In Jesus' parable we hear these words regarding the younger son who burned through his inheritance through wild living, "But when he came to himself he said, 'How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough nd to spare, but here I am dying of hunger!'" (v. 17).  You can picture him, laying there the morning after, recovering from a hangover, out of money, a dead end job, and realizing all he can do is return home.  No more drug money; time to face the music.

And we hear of the faithful Father, the one who paced in front of the window each day staring down the end of the road, hoping the son would return.  This father whom everyone in the community avoided since he had broken all appropriate custom and handed over his son's inheritance before his death.  This Father, who had been hurt and wronged and yet would not give up.

And when he sees the son coming, thin from lack of food, dirty from sleeping under overpasses and alongside creekbeds, and with dark rings under his eyes, the Father runs (and no respectable first century Palestinian man would run for anyone, much less a son who disobeyed and embarrassed you to the community) to meet him and takes him up in his arms.  The fatted calf is killed and the party begins!

But the reflection of this doctor at Grady Hospital, regarding the young man she encountered makes us wonder what happens to the son once the party is thrown and he is home again.  When she asks him about his addiction the doctor asks,

"Is it the craving. . .like. . feeling sick that makes you keep coming back to it?"  I asked this really dumb question, yes. But only because I was curious.

"It's the hating myself, really." You looked down at your arm band and twirled it on your wrist. "That's what makes it so hard when somebody is trying to love you through it. It's really, really hard to have someone loving you like that when you don't love yourself."

This young man's faithful mother forgives him; she is ready to start again and kill another fatted calf, for the son she lost is home again.  Yet, if the son cannot forgive himself, cannot learn to accept the grace he has been offered, the forgiveness of his mother and the chance at a new life is for nothing.

I believe that for many of us, learning to accept grace is one of the hardest things to do.  We let our guilt keep us trapped in the past; we carry the shame that we believe somehow should continually define us.  We believe we must earn any kind of favor we receive; nothing is truly free.  The open arms of others can be faithful and continual, but if we cannot accept that grace, it will bear no fruit.

But that grace is the very heart of the Good News we try to allow to define our lives.  God loves you and God forgives you and you don't have to hold onto your guilt or shame or sense of unworthiness any longer.  God is the one who runs to you and embraces you in the street, wipes the tears from your dirt-stained cheeks and kisses the top of your head.  God knows our guilt and shame and sorrow, and God's grace is real. God's grace is freely given, and God's grace can free us. 

So you can tell that guilty or ashamed part of you that you no longer need it to manage your life, for you are an inheritor of grace. 

There is a balm in Gilead

to make the wounded whole

There is a balm in Gilead

to heal the sin-sick soul.