Old scars

I took the kids to the "Praise in the Park" concert in Downingtown tonight. They kept pestering one another, which made me more stressed than should have been. The music was very good.

I wish I'd been more consistent in exposing them to the positive praise song messages than some of the real trash they get on the radio. Because I listen with them, I find myself continously explaining, critiquing, and changing the channel.

I know B considers some many praise songs overly focused on people rather than on God. That's certainly true for some of them, but not for most.

Scanning the folks in lawn chairs for people I know, I thought about a former friend who lived not far from Downingtown. After his marriage fell apart, he eventually got engaged to a young woman who made herself into a strong candidate for the position of second wife. Perhaps she just saw further ahead than he did. As I understand, it's a very happy marriage.

Hearing the band play "Sanctuary" a praise song standard, I realled the time he had mischeviously riffed on the lyrics, amusing the rest of our staff, who had a tendency to take ourselves way too seriously sometimes.

Our friendship dissolved when he shared a rather testy email I had written him, asking about his lag time in responses, with his fiancee- "what shall I do with this?" he asked her. (I happen to know this because when he responded to me, her equally disturbing response to him was attached.)

"What shall I do with this?"

He was exposed in a way that few of us would ever want to be exposed. But it was clear that there was nothing left of our friendship. I wondered, then, if it had ever existed.

Betrayed as I felt then, I wondered if perhaps this was not so much about me as about his relationships with the powerful women he dated and married.

I tried to forgive him, and her, long ago. We all have baggage.

And what should I do, tonight, with the hurt from this unhealed relationship? I suppose I should accept it as a wound I shall carry, as I have undoubtedly inflicted them on others.

Lord, help me to see the log in my own eye-and to ask for forgiveness from the people I have hurt-deliver me from thinking of myself as righteous. My righteousness is as unclean rags before you, but your grace can deliver me.