The IOU Note I Finally Burned in My Fire Pit
Dale borrowed twenty-eight hundred dollars from me the spring before I got sober, money I did not have to spare even then, and he wrote me a note on the back of a gas receipt promising to pay it back by summer. Summer came and went. So did three more summers after that, each one with a different reason attached, a layoff, a transmission, a baby on the way. I kept that gas receipt in a kitchen drawer for fifteen years, through two moves and one divorce, long after the ink had started to fade and long after Dale himself had drifted out of my life entirely. Last week his daughter sent me a wedding invitation, a kind gesture from a girl who has no idea what her father owes me, and I sat at my own kitchen table holding that cream-colored envelope next to a gas receipt gone soft at the folds, doing arithmetic I had no business still doing after all this time.
I am fifteen years sober, and I used to assume that forgiveness was a single transaction, something you did once in a church basement with your sponsor watching and then never had to do again about that particular person. What that drawer taught me again last week is that a debt you have decided to forgive on paper can still be sitting there, uncollected, in a part of you that never actually signed the release. I had told myself for years that I had let Dale off the hook. The drawer said otherwise. A man does not keep a gas receipt for fifteen years over something he has genuinely set down.
Scripture does not treat this kind of lingering unforgiveness as a small or private matter between two men and an old debt. The writer of Hebrews warns believers to watch something most of us assume is harmless simply because it grows slowly. "Looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled" (Hebrews 12:15, NKJV). Root is the right word for what that receipt had become. It was not sitting idle in that drawer. It had grown underneath everything else for fifteen years, quietly defiling things that had nothing to do with Dale at all, my patience with my own son when he borrowed and was slow to repay, my willingness to trust new people at all.
Paul does not leave bitterness as a feeling we simply manage better with age. He names it something to be removed entirely, replaced with its exact opposite. "Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you" (Ephesians 4:31-32, NKJV). Even as God forgave me. Not a lesser forgiveness scaled down to fit a smaller offense than mine once was. Paul tells the Colossians the same thing from a different angle, naming the complaint I was still nursing for exactly what it was. "Bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do" (Colossians 3:13, NKJV). I had a complaint. I had been bearing it around in a drawer for fifteen years instead of bearing with the man who gave it to me.
Here is where my own reasoning never once got that drawer open for good. I could remind myself accurately that twenty-eight hundred dollars was a real sum for a man in my situation back then, that Dale never once apologized or even acknowledged the debt outright, that forgiving him would not undo what the loss had actually cost my family that year. Every sentence was true, and none of it loosened my grip on that receipt, because unforgiveness was never actually a facts problem waiting on a better case. Peter once asked Jesus how many times forgiveness was actually required of him, hoping for a number he could hit and then stop. "Then Peter came to Him and said, 'Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?' Jesus said to him, 'I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven'" (Matthew 18:21-22, NKJV). Seventy times seven was never a number meant to be counted. It was meant to break my habit of counting at all.
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit offers that fifteen years of sober self-discipline could never finish producing on its own. Paul tells the Galatians where the actual power to release a grudge like mine comes from, and it is not a resolution gritted out at a kitchen table. "I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh" (Galatians 5:16, NKJV). My flesh wanted its twenty-eight hundred dollars back, or at least an apology to close the account. The Spirit was not interested in settling the account. He was interested in a different kind of peace altogether, one Isaiah describes as fixed on something sturdier than whether Dale ever makes this right. "You will keep him in perfect peace, Whose mind is stayed on You, Because he trusts in You" (Isaiah 26:3, NKJV). My mind had been stayed on a gas receipt. It was never going to find perfect peace staring at that instead.
I carried the receipt out to my fire pit Tuesday night and burned it, and I will tell you honestly that it did not feel like triumph. It felt like letting go of something I had held onto so long that my hand had gotten used to the shape of it. I RSVP'd yes to the wedding the same evening. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which old debt you are still keeping folded in your own drawer, which apology you have been waiting fifteen years to collect before you would finally let it go. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on Dale, or whoever your Dale is, ever making it right, and He has promised a peace that is stayed on Him and not on anyone's unpaid account. He will never leave you alone at that table doing arithmetic that was never going to add up to anything but more bitterness.
Scriptures used (NKJV): Hebrews 12:15; Ephesians 4:31-32; Colossians 3:13; Matthew 18:21-22; Galatians 5:16; Isaiah 26:3.
I am fifteen years sober, and I used to assume that forgiveness was a single transaction, something you did once in a church basement with your sponsor watching and then never had to do again about that particular person. What that drawer taught me again last week is that a debt you have decided to forgive on paper can still be sitting there, uncollected, in a part of you that never actually signed the release. I had told myself for years that I had let Dale off the hook. The drawer said otherwise. A man does not keep a gas receipt for fifteen years over something he has genuinely set down.
Scripture does not treat this kind of lingering unforgiveness as a small or private matter between two men and an old debt. The writer of Hebrews warns believers to watch something most of us assume is harmless simply because it grows slowly. "Looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled" (Hebrews 12:15, NKJV). Root is the right word for what that receipt had become. It was not sitting idle in that drawer. It had grown underneath everything else for fifteen years, quietly defiling things that had nothing to do with Dale at all, my patience with my own son when he borrowed and was slow to repay, my willingness to trust new people at all.
Paul does not leave bitterness as a feeling we simply manage better with age. He names it something to be removed entirely, replaced with its exact opposite. "Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you" (Ephesians 4:31-32, NKJV). Even as God forgave me. Not a lesser forgiveness scaled down to fit a smaller offense than mine once was. Paul tells the Colossians the same thing from a different angle, naming the complaint I was still nursing for exactly what it was. "Bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do" (Colossians 3:13, NKJV). I had a complaint. I had been bearing it around in a drawer for fifteen years instead of bearing with the man who gave it to me.
Here is where my own reasoning never once got that drawer open for good. I could remind myself accurately that twenty-eight hundred dollars was a real sum for a man in my situation back then, that Dale never once apologized or even acknowledged the debt outright, that forgiving him would not undo what the loss had actually cost my family that year. Every sentence was true, and none of it loosened my grip on that receipt, because unforgiveness was never actually a facts problem waiting on a better case. Peter once asked Jesus how many times forgiveness was actually required of him, hoping for a number he could hit and then stop. "Then Peter came to Him and said, 'Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?' Jesus said to him, 'I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven'" (Matthew 18:21-22, NKJV). Seventy times seven was never a number meant to be counted. It was meant to break my habit of counting at all.
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit offers that fifteen years of sober self-discipline could never finish producing on its own. Paul tells the Galatians where the actual power to release a grudge like mine comes from, and it is not a resolution gritted out at a kitchen table. "I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh" (Galatians 5:16, NKJV). My flesh wanted its twenty-eight hundred dollars back, or at least an apology to close the account. The Spirit was not interested in settling the account. He was interested in a different kind of peace altogether, one Isaiah describes as fixed on something sturdier than whether Dale ever makes this right. "You will keep him in perfect peace, Whose mind is stayed on You, Because he trusts in You" (Isaiah 26:3, NKJV). My mind had been stayed on a gas receipt. It was never going to find perfect peace staring at that instead.
I carried the receipt out to my fire pit Tuesday night and burned it, and I will tell you honestly that it did not feel like triumph. It felt like letting go of something I had held onto so long that my hand had gotten used to the shape of it. I RSVP'd yes to the wedding the same evening. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which old debt you are still keeping folded in your own drawer, which apology you have been waiting fifteen years to collect before you would finally let it go. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on Dale, or whoever your Dale is, ever making it right, and He has promised a peace that is stayed on Him and not on anyone's unpaid account. He will never leave you alone at that table doing arithmetic that was never going to add up to anything but more bitterness.
Scriptures used (NKJV): Hebrews 12:15; Ephesians 4:31-32; Colossians 3:13; Matthew 18:21-22; Galatians 5:16; Isaiah 26:3.
Comments
Post a Comment