I beg your pardon?

Who sits around imagining the scenario where the ex-girlfriend calls you up and wants you to know she's sorry? I mean the ex-girlfriend who cut your heart out and fed it to the hyenas, laughing while she did it, then reproaches you for not chuckling along, for being a poor sport. I'm talking about months after pulling the plug, stating in no uncertain terms that she neither loves you, nor wants to talk to you again. Who thinks through that scene, imagining how it would be?

Well, yesterday, she called.

I like to think of myself as being, at least in some sense, like the Father of the prodigal son when someone comes to me admitting wrong-doing and asking for forgiveness. I know that the road back from the distant land is no easy one to walk. I know it so well because I too am a sinner. A sinner, yes, but one who has had his own black-hearted sins forgiven and really wants to go and do likewise. I don't mean "is willing" to go and do likewise, but really, really, really wants to. Yet in my best attempts, I find falsity in myself. I find myself guilty of no less than one of two errors.
The first one is the one wherein I just forgive, no problem, no big deal, let it go at that. But letting it go is another thing. One thinks one has let go, and perhaps one has, but then the petition to be forgiven throws it back up in one's face: the humiliation, the injury, the grief, the wound feels like it was fresh again! But, you've hurt me once, I remember, I won't let on like it's a big deal, won't give you the satisfaction of knowing it even matters. I hide the pain, the humiliation, the weakness, all that I am ashamed to never find in any other heart besides my own. In short, I hold my chin up, chest out and put on a good face: you're forgiven.

The other error is the one that follows when I tell myself: intimacy demands an honest emotional response, not a benumbed, stoic one. I must let my guard down and really come clean with my own weakness, my own lack of love. I have to let the other person know that it isn't easy and it did matter deeply, oh God knows how it hurt!

I don't know how God does it. I really don't. I sometimes tell myself that at least he's the Father, he gets to discipline us without impugning his own gracious forgiveness. "Yes, my child, I forgive you. The moral guilt I take from you, but these consequences are nonetheless yours and here is where your sanctification will happen, right there in that mess you've made." That kind of gracious justice seems like it would be satisfying to be able to extend myself to all parties, make the humble pie go down a bit smoother.

But am I God? What about when brother forgives sister? That's a tall order. I don't know how it is supposed to go. I honestly don't. I know that forgiveness has happened in my life before. In spite of everything, I know I've forgiven people for certain things. In fact, I don't hold anything against anybody when I'm sitting in the peace of my own inner sanctum. Then somebody goes and cuts me again, or prods an old, ginger scar and where is my graciousness then?

What does it mean to forgive? What does it mean to seek forgiveness? How do we know when we're forgiven or when we have forgiven. "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." It seems absurd to pray this when I really am at a loss as to how it goes, how it works, how to do it in the clutch situations. But I pray it because I was taught to pray it by the forgiveness master himself, the one who could pull it off even when he was being nailed up naked to a timber. I want to pray it. I want it to be done on earth as it is in heaven. I really do.