Life is Long and "No Hard Feelings"
“Lord knows they haven’t done much good for anyone. Kept me afraid and cold with so much to have and hold. ”
Time is weird. While I was driving in my van, a radio station told me about an important study. You know the ones wherein the science people from Harvard or somewhere get money to tell us something we had never realized before. “The human brain cannot truly understand time.” Yep. That’s what they told me. I was just so thankful that my kids weren’t with me so they didn’t have to hear me yell at the radio for wasting my time.
The irony was, however, that I had actually been thinking a lot about time. My father had died suddenly. So suddenly that I couldn’t tell him one more time that I loved him and that Jesus loved him. That there was forgiveness from me and, more importantly, from Jesus. But the true irony came when I realized that in my meditations on time and my Dad, I wasn’t thinking, “Man! Life is short.” That’s the thing we are supposed to think when we lose someone, right? I actually kept thinking, “Man! Life is a long freaking haul.”
For many years I have had the privilege of working with children with special needs. Being part of the education field means I regularly attend workshops and conferences. The topic of one such conference was the teaching of healthy socialization and how to discourage bullying. The speaker began her section on bullying by stating that if any of us had Irish fathers we, likely, already knew this stuff and had probably never been bullied. I laughed aloud along with a smattering of other conference attendees. True, my father was of Irish lineage and, also true, I had never been bullied.
She didn’t explain the reasoning behind this nor did she even give statistics but there it was. For all the craziness of my father, he had fortified me with the tools to stand against the baddies. As I think back over my years of elementary and high school, I can tell you, most certainly, that I was not the cool kid. Ever. I definitely tried to be a cool kid but the greasy hair in grade 6, horrendous perms (plural) in grade 8, and the vain attempt at sports in grades 8 through 11 ensured that I didn’t make the top tier. But I wasn’t bullied. I always wondered why and now I know. The Irish. Who knew? Do people just sense that I have this inner jerk? My husband claims that I have a look. A subtle-but-not-so-subtle eye squint. I don’t know. But I can tell you this; not being bullied was a good thing.
How does this connect with my thoughts on life being long? While I am thankful for my Irish blood, there is a flip side to this bully-proof character trait. It is a trait that can cause one to treat people like fast food by becoming tired of investing in them and, at worst, writing them off entirely. It can cause one to move on when relationships get prickly and sticky. It can allow one to stoke and feed pet resentments instead of forgiving and going deeper and further.
While my father’s death presented me with a mountain of complicated grief that I still need to climb and conquer, the imminent lesson for me was to be an enduring friend, wife, mother, daughter, sister. I have a strong desire to see people differently; not miserly and for selfish gain but generously and graciously. Anyone who knows me also knows that I am a long time fan of The Avett Brothers, a band from North Carolina. One of their recent songs has been very impacting as I think about seeing relationships as a lifelong commitment and wanting to end well with people. About unforgiveness, or hard feelings, they sing, “Lord knows they haven’t done much good for anyone. Kept me afraid and cold with so much to have and hold.”
While our days are not guaranteed, I have come to believe that we must be looking at our relationships with this question in mind; how do I need to treat this person to ensure they will still want to know me in 2, 5, or 20 years? And the beautiful by-product of this perspective is that it also deepens the relationships right now; in the present. “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.” 1 Peter 4:8.
