Day 12 – The Pain-Intention Matrix

When I was a kid I made a bow and arrow. Sort of.

I had some bamboo that was probably one of those supports for plants. You know that stuff? It’s maybe 5 feet tall and only a little thicker than a pencil. (Mom always had lots of house plants so that’s probably where I got it from.)

Cut it in half and one part is bow, the other is the arrow, once a few notches have been added to the ends.

Mom also sewed a lot (this was the early 80’s after all, the height of craft-dom: macrame plant hangers anyone?) so she had some elastic waistband material that I used as the string.

So it wasn’t much of a bow, but the elastic made it work alright.

The arrow was the cool part. I had a nice pointy tip on it until mom insisted I blunt it. So I wrapped a lot of masking tape over the end until it was a bulb the size of a nickel or maybe even a quarter.

You may see where this is going.

I shot my sister in the forehead!

(by accident, I swear!)

And then I went into full disaster recovery mode. You’ve probably seen it, maybe done it, especially if you’re the oldest of your siblings: you joke and get really energetic and concerned and try to hush up the younger child so that you don’t get in trouble. Keep them from crying too loud, right?

Well, it didn’t matter because a huge welt formed right in the middle of her forehead. (I’m glad I didn’t hit her in the eye.)

But I begged for forgiveness right away. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

Regret instantly set in.

Asking for forgiveness for regret is one thing. I really didn’t mean to hit her in the forehead… I was probably aiming for her body. I know, doesn’t sound much better, right?

Asking for forgiveness for something you don’t regret is quite another. If you don’t really believe it, and you’re just trying to smooth things over, you’re not really all that repentant are you? You’re just trying to appease the other person.

When you’re on the receiving end of the arrow, as I’ve been in other stories, the attitude and the motivation of the other party matters. It’s much easier to forgive when it was an accident or the person is sincerely regretful or repentant.

When they aren’t, and it wasn’t an accident it can be more difficult to “let them off the hook”.

I doodled up a little diagram in my journalling, and so I thought I’d share it here.

The danger zone is up and to the right. The more painful the experience and the more intentional the offender was, the harder it seems to be to forgive.

Remember, this is all in the pursuit of trying to figure out why I could not forgive when it came down to an important moment in my life.

The trick here is that the less painful the experience, the easier to forgive.  The more accidental, the easier to forgive.  It’s when it’s either extremely painful or very intentional, or both, that it becomes the hardest to forgive.