Professors are knowingly and incontrovertibly in an evil alliance to assign all quizzes, tests, and major papers during the same exact week. This cannot be avoided no matter what professors you pick. Even the ones you thought were cool (because they were younger and perhaps only went by their first name, which was something usually along the lines of "Mark" or "Jenny") are in on this conspiracy.
I had three tests this week, a quiz, and two major assignments. Throw into that my job working at the commons, helping to plan a pro-life rally in the spring, staying up late trying to keep my potentially concussed roommate awake, and fitting a religious retreat into my schedule, it's been a hectic week. I've had about four nights out of the past seven that have only had about four to five hours of sleep.
In the past 24 hours, I got 15 hours of sleep. I went on a run with one of my friends too, and I feel awesome, even though I'm helping to run a table to promote a pro-life speaker tomorrow, and I'm not entirely sure what's all going on with that. But that's not all of why I feel awesome.
Friday night at the retreat, we had faith sharing. Now, this scares the ever-loving hell out of me (I like using "ever-loving" as a swear modifier, but it doesn't really make as much sense here). I love faith sharing though. It feels so good to be able to talk to people and feel like they understand you, and maybe to get some things off of your chest. My usual policy with faith sharing is that once I think of something I want to talk about, I always wait fifteen seconds after the last speaker, to give someone who maybe urgently wants to talk the chance to get up there and speak. Plus, it kind of makes it easier to avoid going up front too if I give myself that time period.
God however, had different plans than for me to sit quiet that night though. After a couple of people went up (including one of my close friends, that had a problem he hadn't told me about, but I'm glad he let it out), I was doing my counting thing, and I got up past twenty. Nobody was making any moves, and finally I just said "screw it" to my insecurities and I stood up. Once you stand up, you can't really sit back down without people noticing, so I was locked in.
A lot of people had been talking about prayer and what it's done for them, so I started there. I said how what prayer does is awesome, but what prayer is is even better. I talked about how great it is to be able to talk to God whenever you wanted to, and my favorite ways to pray. And then I said how there was one prayer I wasn't sure about. Whenever I say it, I wonder if I'm saying or using it right or whatever.
That prayer is the Our Father. There's a line in it that says "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." But as I told them, I have a huge grudge. There is someone that I haven't forgiven, and I don't know how to forgive him. I don't know where he is or what he's doing or whether he's even sorry or not, and I don't know how to get closure and let go of this whole situation. If I'm doing well, I don't usually think about it, but when I start getting tired or stressed out, if I have nothing else to distract me, it will be the only thing I think about. Just on and on through my mind, as many bad thoughts about all of this as I can think of. I told them how sometimes I just can't function right because of it. And I apologized to my friend Dan, because the "problem" I talked about in this post had to do with how I can't forgive this person. I've been praying about this, but I still haven't found a solution.
Afterwards, people were hugging me, and I kept bursting out into tears. My friends told me to just keep praying, and that God never gives us more than we can handle. One of my friends told me I was beautiful, because that was the first thing that popped into her head. I definitely felt a lot more beautiful than I had in a while.
For the first time in almost three years since this grudge started, I actually talked to someone about it. Sure, I didn't go deep into it, and when Dan wanted to ask me more about it, I had to tell him that I'm sworn to secrecy about the specifics (which is the truth, until I ask for that promise to be given back to me). But I did bring it up. I finally told people about it. In my daily journal that night, I think I wrote "I did it!" close to eighteen times in a row, I was just that happy.
It may not be much, but it's a start, and that's how healing works, a little bit at a time.
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