Unforgiveness – It can be like a stick in the butt

Have you ever walked around with a stick in your butt? I have – really. On a mountain bike ride a few years ago, I went down and my back side fell onto the branch of a dead tree. The branch impaled my upper glute three inches deep, stopping at the back of my hip bone and leaving a piece of itself behind... in my behind.

As cool and masculine as that sounds, we didn’t know there was a stick in my butt until more than three months later. I went to an ER clinic a few hours later. They just stitched up the hole not knowing there was a 1 inch long and ½ inch wide stick in the hole. In less than a week I had a baseball sized abscess. We treated it for two months until my friend, who was a physician’s assistant, decided to do an MRI. When he saw what was in there, and that it had been in there for more than three months, the treatment plan changed to surgery – two of them in fact, since they couldn’t find “ The Glute Stick” in the first surgery.

These days I think unforgiveness is like my Glute Stick.

· We all are getting injured just doing life.

· Most injuries are unintentional.

· Most injuries are the size of a splinter.

· We have a tendency to enlarge them into a Glute Stick.

· We get infected (I have to say it – we get butt hurt).

· We distance ourselves from the people who injured us.

· We get relationally reclusive and weaker.

Forgiveness has the opposite effect on the infection of unforgiveness. If we can forgive sooner, then emotional infections and relational surgeries won’t be necessary.

Consider these points when you get a stick in your butt…

· Most people don’t intentionally hurt you. They intentionally do something for themselves which affects you and unintentionally ends up hurting you.

· Acknowledge the offense. This starts with a personal conversation with yourself. Call the hurt what it is. I felt hurt when… It made me feel disrespected, disregarded, etc..

· Forgive the offender. Remember that forgiveness, at first, is an act of the will and not an act of emotion. Emotions will follow later. Forgiving the offender may or may not involve telling the offender they hurt you.

· Release yourself from the burden of carrying around the offense and the offender. Oftentimes most people who hurt you have moved on and may not realize or remember what they even did to you. You’re the one carrying the weight of the unforgiveness. If you do the first three things on this list, you can experience way more freedom than walking around with a stick in your butt and the relational infection that usually follows.

· Be a little less sensitive. Most “sticks” are really just splinters. Splinters are easier to deal with.

All is good with my Glute Stick now. I have a really cool scar and a friend took The Glute Stick and converted into a necklace. It hangs from the rear-view mirror of my car since wearing it grossed too many people out.

When I see it hanging there, it reminds of a cool injury and a 3 ½ month saga to get that stick out of my butt. It also helps me to remember to be more forgiving and less sensitive.

How about you? Are you walking around with a stick in your butt – a stick of unforgiveness. Is there a friend that hurt you that you unfriended – and not just on social media? Forgiveness is a virtue – unforgiveness isn’t. Most friendships are worth what forgiveness can give them.

#braverandstrongertogether #glutestick #toosensitive #giveforgiveness #forgivenessisavirtue #unforgivenessisnotattractive