Somebody hurt me a couple of

years ago. Pulled the rug out from under me. Sent me slipping and sliding

emotionally. Floundering like I don't ever remember floundering before.

About three weeks ago, I decided

it was important for me to go back and confront the folks who did that

to me. I made an initial call to lay the groundwork for just such a confrontation.

I hung up the phone and got sick.

Three days into whatever I

caught or whatever caught me, my husband says to me, "Honey, you

are making yourself sick. You have to put this thing behind you. Whatever

it takes, you have to do it. You cannot let it continue to have this kind

of power over you."

This keyboard is not capable

of telling you how irritated I was as I listened to his comments. I responded

I had given nobody that much control over me.

Last week I started on my second

round of antibiotics and finally the upper respiratory thing I had began

to release me from its grasp.

About 15 days into the whole

episode I realized nobody else around me had gotten sick. That maybe my

hubby was right. That maybe I was wrong. Maybe the experience of two years

ago really did still have that kind of control over me.

Have you ever been there? Maybe

it was the death of a loved one, a discovery that a spouse or lover had

been unfaithful, an accident of sorts, or just plain old cruelty on the

part of somebody in a position to get to you.

We don't get though life

without those things, do we? People hurt us. We can't help that.

We can't prevent it. We can't control what others do and say,

can we? But we can control what degree of control they hold over us by

their actions or lack of action.

We can do that. We can come

to terms with the victim mentality that sets in if we choose to. We can

decide how long we will be a victim. We can let go. Forgive and forget.

Trouble is, I'm in a position now where I want to do just that. I

want to forgive and forget, but I don't want those I want to forgive

to ever forget that I'm forgiving.

Does that make my forgiveness

unreal? Not genuine?

Folks, I don't know. Sometimes

we just have to wing it, don't we? We have to work through things

that bother us. Eat at us. Cripple us emotionally.

It's like the upper respiratory

illness I'm finally getting over. I felt like I had it the first

week, then it had me for the past two weeks.

That's how it is with

emotional pain and injury, too. We have it inflicted on us. And sometimes

we let go. Sometimes we don't or can't, then it has us. I'm

wondering now, if the longer it has us, then does it take that much longer

for us to become free of its hold? Or can we just decide, that is choose

to be free and be free once and for all?

I'm not there yet. But

I will be.

Yesterday, I spotted a dazzling

red, fat and fluffy cardinal in a naked tree in my back yard. His brilliance

against the sparkling grey and white limbs was breathtaking. Through the

binoculars I stared for nearly an hour as he posed and sang for me in

the delicate lace framework of the tree's winter branches.

I remembered a poem I wrote

one time.

IT MATTERS NOT

I read not what the world

expects

and write naught for another's

praise

It matters not

if my pen's stroke doth

an eyebrow raise

I'll giggle

I condescend to no man's

ways

and always will follow my heart

it matters not

if, at times, I do not know

where to start

I'll wait

I seek not to follow the crowd

for following breeds vanity

It matters not

if only a lonely bird sings

for me

I'll listen

I trust but the one God I

know

and hold I tight unto His hand

It matters not

if others doubt and do not

understand

I'll trust

I act not on another's

faith

Nor can another act on mine

It matters much

that each must find his own

faith

in his own time

I will find that woman again.

I will regain the self-confidence she had when she wrote those words.

She's worth finding. I want to know her again. She's worth knowing.

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