Hi, my dear weary friends! I must confess that this week has been my weariest in some time!
Weasel, our five year old autistic son fell Tuesday while helping his daddy in the garage. He didn’t fall hard but split open his knee and got 5 staples! There is a whole lot that goes into that process but that is for another day and time! Then there’s that pink antibiotic he has to take now to fight off any infection BUT. I cringe each and every time I have to give it to him! You see red food dye is one of his triggers. It induces screaming, verbal and motor tics, uncontrolled outbursts and on and on.
Matter of fact this was my post from facebook yesterday expressing just a tad of my frustration,
“To the person who thought it was a good idea to put dye into the medicine my child needs, you and I need to have a long talk, AND YOU NEED TO BABYSIT! Thank you”
But in all reality those are little things…it makes me shake my head to say that! Anyway there was more to my week. More that frustrated me, and what’s more hurt me far deeper than anything I have felt in quite some time.
IN ONE WORD-GOSSIP.
Not amongst acquaintances, not amongst church family, not amongst friends but amongst family members…..not to mention some of my favorites! I really can’t express the hurt it caused,, but as the day went on and I thought and prayed, i the conviction in my heart grew to confront it, but how. I never do that stuff publicly BUT this time was different. At first my response was pure mother bear…go out and rip their faces of…yes this “little” incident involved a bunch of family members determining there was not a thing wrong with him…yes I know there are half a million injustices in this whole little scenario, but I’m not here to go into that…maybe later.
As i thought and prayed throughout the day one person kept coming to mind….Jesus.
Jesus was the most falsely accused person of all times. He was SINLESS and GUILTLESS. And yet he was still beaten, spit on and crucified. He was punished for all of the things people falsely accused him of.
Now as we think about these things, how do you think that this all came to be? Did a mob of people all randomly show up in the Garden of Gethsemane and decide to try him as a criminal? No. And we see that through the gospels as the pharisees and other religious leaders became more uncomfortable we see more talking behind his back. “And the reasoned amongst themselves” , we see it often in the gospels. They would try to catch Jesus up, they wanted to see him not be who he said he was. But amazingly Jesus always knew their heart condition, and could answer immediately. I’m not Jesus. I had to think. I had to pray. i had to cool off.
The major question I had was ” how did Jesus respond to the back-biting, gossiping, all-knowing attitudes of those around him?” The answer..calm, concise direct…almost always not directed at one single person but broad to cover all”
Ok so now i knew how to respond but the words failed and so I prayed and then about 7 Tuesday evening it came like a flood. I posted it to Facebook and moved on.
There have always been a lot of this through school, college and life in general. I have been taught repeatedly to hate the sin not the sinner. I have forgiven despite the lack of apology. But dear weary mom, no matter your circumstances. Whether the gossip is true or unfounded, whether or not you know about it. Gossip hurts, it hurts a lot. I have cried those tears too. Especially when it comes to our kids, it’s hard. No one fully understands, they never can, but we can look to the one who suffered greatly for no reason. He had no sin. He didn’t retaliate, he didn’t hurt them, he forgave them. He covered them with his blood. He uttered “Father forgive them for they know not what the do.
I know it feels impossible. But you can! You can forgive because you are forgiven.
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