On Bitterness

The things we carry

This past week I had to get out of my head.

You know the feeling.

God moved some special things in my soul (churchese for f*cked with my sense of purpose and identity) and I needed to walk in the woods and let my mind wander a little.

I’m new to Nashville, so I found a small set of trails out in Franklin that I could walk with impunity in my chacos and let myself attempt to process the divine in the short time I had before my evening engagement.

God has a way of saying exactly what I need to hear without it being what I wanted to hear, which brings small joy and great frustration. But while I was looking for answers in the “what am I supposed to do now God now that I moved my whole life up to Tennessee” he simply answered with

“You’re not bitter anymore.”

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Mind you I’ve been bitter for a long, long time. Although I’m certain this is absolutely foreign to your saintly ears, this concept of bitterness.

It’s the same sensation of arriving to your destination with a bag that’s slightly too big. You and your friend look at you and wonder why on earth you packed so much, and you immediately feel self conscious for pouring a glass and packing half your wardrobe.

Bear with me this is going somewhere I swear.

When I arrived to Nashville I felt like I was walking around with a massive Appalachian Trail - size backpack on full of trauma and hurt. And I’m a generally positive person. I can only imagine the backpacks some of y’all carry around, and I hurt for you.

But recently I’ve noticed the bitterness fade, almost like a wine stain on a nice shirt. I’m simply too young and naive to consider it fading for good, and frankly too tired to continue to apply bleach.

And herein lies the rub,

that I’ve only ever considered forgiveness to be the constant application of bleach to a stain that has stubbornly sunken into the very threads of the fabric of my soul.

And like it or not I have a Bucee’s gas pump line of folks that I need to forgive, and I can only assume the same for you, too.

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But my issue with forgiveness as it seems to be taught in CCD is that it lies on us to forgive and eradicate any sense of bitterness we may be feeling, stubbornly applying a compress to a wound we haven’t yet taken the time to examine.

Treating forgiveness and the removal of bitterness as a button on a gaming console, rather than a stain that takes time to wash out.

Feelings don’t disappear. Hurt doesn’t simply melt into the shadows. Wine stains on white clothing don’t simply wash out with a deep and frustrated scrub.

Nope.

I moved to Nashville with a backpack full of bitterness, that I had carefully loaded inside since I didn’t have the slightest clue how best to deal with it. Layer upon careful layer would take time to unpack and deal with individually, and my early writing sessions gave me the perfect opportunity.

And write I did.

I have numerous songs now that I’m planning on releasing this coming year that cover the various stages of heartbreak and depression I walked through in the past year before I moved. I’m proud of them, and they’re honest.

Painfully so.

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But can I be even more honest for a second?

I feel as if the wash cycle of my forgiveness is complete on many of the things I was writing about. And I’m perfectly fine with that.

There is a notable difference between healing and wallowing. The first requires a sort of passion and resurrection, with pain as an inevitable and necessary room in the cavern approaching the heart. The second is a reliving of that shallow cavern, with no particular end in mind.

Heaven forbid I spend the rest of my time in Nashville in that first shallow cavern.

You see, reliving our pain is completely necessary. Examining the stain to understand how deeply it has seeped into the threads of our fabric is entirely necessary and effective.

But once that’s done, the remaining bitterness can be shed almost like a snakeskin. There is no need for the protective layer anymore. It is in fact itchy and dull, old and used.

There is no place for bitterness in the Kingdom of God.

This is not to say that it is a simple matter to lay down bitterness and bury the hatchet for good.

A thousand times not.

The hatchet was earned, the war was fought, and the wounds may be still fresh for many of us.

But the peace we’re offered by the Great Spirit (if you will) makes our bitterness pale-faced in comparison. This peace is only attainable in releasing our bitterness, in completing the washing cycles necessary to remove the stains of hurt, and in loving more.

“This kind can only be driven out through prayer.”

I pray for each and every one of you that we all strive together to rid ourselves of the bitterness of past hurts and step into the joy offered to us by He Who suffered all.

Amen.