Broken Wires – Apologies and Forgiveness

This morning my kids are at school and I’m home pondering apologies and forgiveness for the routine conflicts experienced in family and friendships. One of my own struggles is that after I have wronged someone, even if I have apologized and they say they have forgiven me, I still feel the brokenness. I can shoulder the hurt for years and stash it away to beat myself up with later. Sometimes if I’m the one wounded, I don’t address hurtful actions but blame myself for having high expectations or assuming a friendship was tighter than it was. I’m not in therapy and haven’t studied these topics, but I suspect this isn’t a universal experience. I suspect forgiveness should bring a sense of relief, not continued shame. I suspect I’m not so great at apologies and forgiveness.

In high school physics, I learned how to wire a lamp. We were to find an object to serve as a lamp base and wire it for a lightbulb. I found a mini lampshade and a vintage wooden Coca-Cola bottle crate in a thrift store, which mom drilled a hole in for me. We learned how to strip the rubber insulation from the ends of the wires with wire cutters and reconnect the metal ends by twisting them and wrapping them in electrical tape or joining then with a wire connector. My sister likes to remind me that when she repeated my project five years later, she discovered I had wired my lamp backwards, but it did work. The skill came in handy a few years ago when I replaced the kitchen light fixture.

I strongly believe that conflicts within families and close friendship, when there is no abuse, should be resolved and move towards reintegration of trust and love with work not too unlike rewiring a lamp. Active relationships are bound together by electrical wires that transmit love, care, communication, and understanding. When there is conflict, the wires are snipped. Those hot ends of the cut connections with the ones we love will spark and hurt. They are dangerous and can short-circuit our whole system if not dealt with, so they must go somewhere. Ideally, as children we learn to forgive because we were frequently apologized to and had restoration modeled to us. We were taught to pause (temporarily shut off the power source), talk about the conflict and seek mutual understanding (stripping the wires to expose the metal again), and finally forgive and move forwards with new, healthy boundaries (taping the two ends back together). We face the pain, make amends, repair and reconnect.

As adults, we may find we are lacking those skills of repair. Either the broken wires are capped and tucked back into us, stealing us from forming new connections, or they latch onto unhealthy behaviors to numb the exposed ends. Sometimes, it’s the other people that are not willing to reconnect even when we long to, and sometimes there is a good reason we should not reconnect with a person. When reconciliation isn’t available, God is ready and willing to bind up and hold these hot wires to His heart to return to us when the time is right to love and trust others again.

When I was first married and faced common early marital conflicts (often about how I was messy and he was organized), my instinct was to withdraw and hold onto anger, to make my spouse aware of my anger without discussing it. I was like that livewire whipping and sparking on the street after a tree takes down a line. This didn’t fly because my husband held strongly to the philosophy “We do not let the sun go down on our anger”. It was what he learned from his father, and slowly over time, the blessing of wisdom from his father began to transform my own heart.

As I’ve been raising my two boys and felt that old nature of passive aggression flare up in me, I’ve seen the looks on their faces as I withdraw and try to make them feel how I feel – anger at them disappointment in them. My sparky ends zap them! I recognize the responding hurt and anger in their eyes because I have felt that anger and frustration of being rejected, of having eyes averted from me and not being granted the right to know what I’ve done wrong or how to restore the relationship. It feels so incredibly unfair. I’ve had to come back to them and explain that it’s wrong of me, ask forgiveness and attempt to bind up those throbbing ends.

In the few years left of my boys being home with me, I want my sons to know how to mend the broken wires. I really want to apologize more to my sons and husband, without hesitation,  more vulnerably, more honestly, not manipulatively or in the spirit of self-deprecation of self-pity, just really strip all that stuff down to the honest truth, so that they learn what to do with their own loose ends, the practice of apologies and forgiveness. Just like humbly apologizing is a muscle that must be trained and strengthened, so too is forgiveness. For them to learn forgiveness, so must I learn and practice forgiveness. For them to learn reconciliation, so must I. For them to allow conflict to give rise to strength and beauty, so must I.

Ultimately, my hope is that the love and forgiveness of Jesus shows us that no matter what we have done or have had done to us, we are deemed worthy of being pursued, held close, and lifted back up. There is no apology safer than the one made to Him. Jesus’ hanging on the cross was not a passive aggressive display to show us just how messed up we are but rather a fight through the death to bind up all those broken wires, to weave beauty and joy out of sorrow and pain. It’s hitting me now that I’ve often felt such shame looking at the cross, when what I should have felt was embrace, relief, and acceptance.

Ephesians 4:31-32 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.