It's 3am, and I have to pee.
It's one of those things that is a part of my life due to just getting older. I should know that if I don't drink anything after 8:30pm and use the bathroom before going to bed, I can generally sleep through the night. But some days I don't get home until late, I have a glass of orange juice or tea before my 9pm bedtime, and next thing you know I am up at 3am to go pee. But normally I can go back to sleep as soon as I do that.
However, I have been having trouble going back to sleep recently. I go to the bathroom, crawl back into bed, and lay their trying to will myself to go back to sleep. Next thing you know the call of prayer goes off at 3:45am and then at 4:00am. My alarm goes off at 5am. I get sleepy about 6am, but I leave for work at 6:30am. Then I go into work sleepy, angry, and upset; craving a nonfat Chai Latte with an espresso shot and a breakfast sandwich. You snack to stay awake on all the things your body craves, and you're burnt by the end of the day. You want to go to bed but you know that if you go to bed too early, you're going to stay up the night.
My momma used to tell me that when I have times like that, it means that God is trying to tell me something. But what was it? I honestly didn't know. I thought I have handled my conflicts or moved on from issues stemming from co-workers and some students. I thought I moved on and forgave myself and them for incidents of misunderstanding and mistrust. I thought I forgave them, but in all honesty, I really didn't.
When I pass them in the hallways I cringed or didn't say hello; I used email and text messages to get any issues out. But I could have sworn I forgave them. But I didn't.
It's 3am and I have to pee.
Another night of troubled sleep and awareness that God is indeed trying to tell me something. My words in my head may have said that I forgave, but my heart which directs everything I do told me different. That's when I realized that forgiveness truly is an active verb. Clarissa Estes, a poet and psychoanalyst who specializes in traumatic experiences, stated that:
"How does one know if she has forgiven? You tend to feel sorrow over the circumstance instead of rage, you tend to feel sorry for the person rather than angry with him. You tend to have nothing left to say about it at all."
I think it's so much easier to forgive when you are younger, you move on quicker, you get your toy back, you may fight but have the ability to move on from that fight. But the older you get, the more those experiences where you are hurt, affect you so much deeper. It's seems that so much more is at stake and the heart and spirit can only handle so much. So when you open your heart and it gets hurt because of betrayal or lies, or even being irrelevant in a world where you once belonged, true forgiveness is simply hard because its admitting to yourself that your heart has been battered and bruised.
But bruises do heal. At least I think they do.
If anything the bruises heal enough that you don't notice them as much. You breathe, you move on, you can go back to sleep. And although there may be some scars, they do fade enough over time. When that happens, you can truly say that you have forgiven them and moved on; you can say I had an epiphany.
It's 3am and I have to pee.
I wake up and pad to my bathroom and empty my bladder. I return to my bed, snuggle under the covers. And for the first time in a couple of weeks and I did go back to sleep.
