GET DRUNK AND GO TO A WOMEN’S RETREAT

This might sound to you like a horrible suggestion. Truly, I don’t advise showing up ANYWHERE drunk. It’s just time for me to tell you a story with some grit. It’s time for me to make you laugh AND feel. This is my sixth blog post and if this was our sixth coffee, this is probably the story I would tell you. I would pull down the veil of humour and let you see a little more of my heart. So here goes. Welcome to our sixth coffee.
I am a passionate, intense person. I love people intensely. In college I studied the care of people, big and small. When I get hurt, I hurt the same way I love: intensely.  So, if I let myself love you intensely and then you betray me, I would hate you intensely. I would devote countless hours examining how on earth you could ever hurt ME when I had loved you so well. (That sounds arrogant as I type it.)

Forgiveness was modelled superbly in my home, so I have no excuses. My parents were excellent at apologizing to each other and also to my brother and I. Somewhere along my journey, I think I must have taken some weird pride in my ability to love and take care of people well, because if you hurt me, I just could. not. deal.

Several years back, my husband and I got hurt in our work environment and it ripped me to shreds. I tried to recover from it on my own, but all I really did was walk around bleeding for a good solid year. While Barry seemed to be able to make peace and move forward all in one piece, I fumed and smoked and bled for months and months.

I avoided people in the grocery store. I stuck to my safe, “non-betrayer” friends. I continued to work in caring for people. I had best friend relationships and they loved me well in this time of pain. They listened with empathy, affirmed and encouraged me to forgive.  It did not work. I did not let it. In my mind, if I was to let go of this offense without some sort of justice being exacted, it would be the same as admitting that I was open for some more hefty doses of offense. The lie that rang in my heart was, “You are fatally flawed. There is some reason that people cannot work with you. This is going to happen to you over and over and over again.” Those are some scary words that I did not want to be true.

We had been pastoring a house church with our group of besties. As we continued loving and taking care of our community, the besties, who had offered us such beautiful support, felt like they were supposed to move onto something different. They had every right to this decision. Their exit was, to me, like sticking a knife in a raw wound. In my paranoia, I interpreted it as, “See, there it is again. The fatal flaw. Even the people closest to you can’t work with you.”  This was far from the truth and had nothing whatsoever to do with the reasons they had moved on. Nonetheless, I felt betrayal with a fire I could not have imagined. I am passionate but this was out of control. As I Gollum-ed away in my messed up mind, I imagined my very best friends as betrayers and haters of me.

Me and my three besties had made plans to go to a women’s retreat together, months prior to this time. It was the Monday before the weekend retreat was due to start and I was seething with hurt. I didn’t even want to be in the same room with them, let alone tucked away at a weekend retreat. I reached out to a Mentor of mine. She encouraged me to just tell them how I was feeling and not to let this poisonous stuff in my heart rob me of the weekend to come. I reached out to my counsellor (Doesn’t everybody have a counselor?) and she said the same thing. She told me to tell them how I felt and not to worry.

So instead, I drank half a bottle of rum twenty minutes before they picked me up.

I was so afraid of the toxic hurt rolling around inside of me. I was afraid I would just start screaming at them. I had no idea what to do with intense feelings of betrayal directed at the people who loved me the most.  Prior to this point, I had not ever consumed a substance with the intent of getting inebriated. In my psycho state, it was the only thing I could think to do to get the pain to stop and my mouth to shut before I did something reprehensible. Bahahahaaaa.

I remember getting into the van and laying my chair back. I remember being asleep. I remember them asking me if I was ok and me mumbling that I was. FYI: being drunk does not make the pain go away, it just makes it a little groggier. We arrived at the camp and I behaved like an idiot. I did not speak to my friends. I got in my bed as soon as we arrived and tried to sleep it off. They all went for a walk and were probably thinking, “What the heck, Michelle??” (It just occurred to me that this is the same thing my friends said to themselves about me in The Good Manners Tea Party From Hell).

Later that evening , my friends roused me for dinner. We sat down around a fire and they started probing. “What is going on with you, Michelle? What is wrong? What is happening?” By this time, the rum stupor was starting to wear off. I then proceeded to vomit a whole year’s worth of pain on them. Pain I had nursed and tended and had never chosen to let heal. Pain that had not a thing to do with them, really. Pain that I could have been free from long before that moment. I accused them. I hurled spiteful words. I told them how they weren’t good friends and how they had disregarded, abandoned and betrayed me. It was over the flippin’ top.

My friends were so confused. The one who doesn’t like conflict AT ALL almost got in a car and left, to escape the onslaught. Finally, one clear-headed friend got an epiphany and said, “Michelle what is this REALLY about? What is REALLY going on here?” That was all it took to shake me loose from my pig slop. Those words helped me understand that the pain and poison I was spewing was much older than the events of the last few weeks. It was a cauldron I had been stirring inside for a solid year that was spilling out onto my beloved friends. I stopped immediately. It was like they had thrown me a line, a float, a way out.

I spent the rest of the weekend pursuing my own healing through forgiveness. The retreat schedule gave us plenty of time for processing and prayer. This time, when given the offer to let go and forgive, I chose to accept the offer. I had to open up my hands, accept the truth that someone had chosen to hurt me and forgive as I had been forgiven. I had to ask forgiveness from my friends for unleashing my fire on them. I had to believe the truth that God was not even angry at the people who had hurt me.  So why would I choose to be?

I learned so much about the power of forgiveness, by not forgiving. I learned that wounds must be tended, not scratched at. Wounds have to be let out in the air. They have to have a chance to recover in peace. You have to be willing to take a good look at your wound and say, “Wow, this is bad. I wish this had never happened. I need to get this healed so I can be whole and healthy again”.  If you guard your wound and don’t get it to the proper care, it will go septic. That’s what happened to me. I went septic. Old wounds made new wounds. Old wounds poisoned my perception and colored how I saw other people. Remember when Frodo started to question the loyalty and motives of his closest companion, Samwise? That’s what unhealed wounds will do. That’s what unforgiveness will do. It’s not worth it. If you find yourself lashing out at your favorite people in what seems to be an unwarranted way, you may need to take a closer look at your wound and give it some air. So it can close up. So you can watch it smooth over. So you can know that you are not better than Jesus in your potential to be betrayed.

I am lucky in that I have three true Samwises who would not let me continue to bleed. They were willing to look at my wound and then to STAND UP to it. If you have friends like this in your life, you have true riches. I cannot imagine any worse gauntlet I could put them through, so I am going to keep them.

This is us on the way back from the retreat and I am free and sober. When you see me here, can you imagine how grateful I am that they didn’t give up on me? What you see there is one relieved chica. Relieved to be loved. Relieved to be free of unforgiveness and it’s nasty tentacles. I have a canvas print much like this one on my dresser so I can be consistently reminded to be grateful for the great riches I have in these friends.

Let’s revisit this blog’s title. What I mean by this is: if you are broken and bleeding and spilling toxic unhealed junk on people you love, if you are numbing yourself or hiding, the best place for you to be is retreating from unforgiveness with the ones who know you the best. Show up with your friends. Let them see what hurts you, even if you have let it fester too long. Listen to them when they tell you truth. Don’t waste one more minute letting old pain create fictional new pain. Forgive.