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I heard my phone ring, and shook off my first inclination to answer it; instead I recalled how I hated him. I kept myself from calling back on my lunch break, on my walk to the bus stop, and as I sat on a park bench after work, but I was suffering through it.
The next day at work my phone rang again, Lisa, my good friend and the office secretary urged me to answer it.
"Don't let it go to voice mail again," she said.
"I have nothing to say to him. I was good to him, he did this."
"But you do have a lot to say him. I know him cheating was the last thing you’d expect and unfortunately the people we love sometimes hurt us the most. But they need our forgiveness as well,” she responded.
"FORGIVENESS?????" I laughed while I mocked her suggestion.
"We have all hurt someone at some point in time and needed forgiveness. It's just when it's our turn to forgive, we want to hold back," she said while rubbing my back and trying to calm me down.
"Let's just end the conversation," I responded.
I tried to work in spite of the anxiety I was feeling, and though I was angry I missed him at the same time. There's no sense in loving a man that would make such a huge mistake, I told myself. But nothing seemed to get him off my mind. I retrieved my messages and I could hear the sorrow in his voice as he explained that he would do anything to change his terrible choices and his confusion from having his first love reappear just a year before our wedding confused him. "It's all a big lie," I said aloud at my desk, and deleted the message.
“Excuse me?” my co-worker said.
“Forget it,” I responded.
But I couldn't lie to myself, I knew in my heart he was a good man, but could good men make such bad mistakes? We had memories that no one could relate to because they were our own and I wondered if he was thinking about them too.
I had hardly eaten in a week, barely ironed, barley slept and hardly smiled. This is all his fault, I kept thinking. He's the reason why I feel this way, and so I decided to call him and tell him how he was ruining my life.
"Hello, Steven."
"Linda, it's so good to hear your voice," he said
"I just called to tell you how angry and miserable I am. How could you do this to me?" I said.
"I was confused and I made terrible choices. I shouldn't have done any of this and I'm sorry," he said.
"No your not, and I don't think you understand how you are making me feel."
"How can I prove to you how sorry I am," he responded.
"You can't," I said and hung up the phone, then forced myself to sleep.
I woke up the next morning and all I could think of was the "love" chapter in Corinthians. "Love holds no record of wrongs." But I fought the scripture thinking it couldn't apply to me. I was aloud to stay angry, even if my anger was hurting him and myself. Throughout the day the scripture kept running through my mind, and oddly I began to question whether I was the one who didn't love. Was I sure of what love is? It clearly states that I shouldn't hold a record of wrongs, and he did come to me asking for forgiveness.
The moral of the story is a month had past, and her anger started to subside, unfortunately it is a bad memory that could steal her joy if she allows it, but she has found the strength to trust that Steven asked God and her for forgiveness, and his repentance has led him closer to the cross. She has learned that though she has never cheated someone, the inability to forgive and not hold every wrong against them, keeps her from loving completely and in a sense that could cheat them. They are happy, faithful and married now and look at the past hurt as a lesson which has brought them closer together, instead of tearing them apart. Lisa understands that some may have chosen a different ending to their story, but for her, her choice has made life happier for the both of them.
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