FROM 10 YEARS AGO
Saturday on the radio a woman called from Harrisburg. Some two thousand miles away on the banks of the Susquehanna.
A girl, actually, at least that’s how she sounded. A wisp of a voice somewhat shy and high, calling a stranger in a studio in the mountains.
It had been a ragged half hour. Something about Colin Powell and what he said on MTV, about condoms and AIDS, and how abstinence education was best but that there needed to be a Plan B as well, for the ones who go astray.
And the conservatives had called in and they couldn’t see that there was room in the world for both. And they were right but not completely and I went off on a jag. About the best way to teach chastity and virtue was not through fear, but through wonder and awe.
That it is not the fear of hell that controls conduct, it is the love of heaven. That people run best when they are running toward something, not away from something else. And I said that abstinence before marriage and fidelity after marriage brought a peace and happiness, and a sexual fulfillment, that no other way of life could.
I said that I didn’t know this by experience, and that I was a failure in this regard, but that I knew it was true.
And then she called.
The girl from Pennsylvania.
The last caller of the day. Three hours of shouting and laughing and trifling matters. And then the girl. With two minutes left and the show almost done.
“But what,” she began, “what it it’s already gone.
“What if you’ve already done something you shouldn’t have?”
Asked of some jerk on the radio, somebody moonlighting for an extra $300, cursing the Saturday lost and wishing he’d been able to sleep in.
“What if you’ve already done something you shouldn’t have?”
The fundamental question of our existence. Asked by a girl who was troubled and hurt. What if you’ve already done something you shouldn’t have?
Actions can be like scars that bind and disfigure us, injuries from which there seems no prospect for recovery. A choice, a word, a deed, and life appears forever changed. Forever damaged. And we despair.
The promise of yesterday, and the innocence, look like they are lost. We look like we are lost. And the joy and the happiness seem reserved for others, and not ourselves, and nothing appears able to ever change that.
But that is wrong.
That’s what I told that girl.
I told her that God is quick to forgive. That when we regret what we have done, and feel sorrow because of it, and abandon it, and move on different, asking God for forgiveness, he is quick to forgive.
To make us whole and new again.
That’s what I told her on the radio.
And that she must forgive herself. I asked her when it was and she said she had been 17, four years ago, and I told her that it was time to let it go. She was a different person now, who had chosen a better way to live, and if she asked God to forgive her, and he did, then she must do the same.
And the two minutes were up and it was time for the out cue and the show was done and the headphones went dead.
And off somewhere in Pennsylvania was a young woman unsure.
Like most of the rest of us. Unable or unwilling to grasp the principle of repentance and allow it to work, for ourselves or for others. To let bygones be bygones and the new day truly new.
Rather, we hold ourselves and others to our worst days and our worst decisions. Defining ourselves and others by our most striking weaknesses and darkest hours.
Condemning ourselves in private and others in public. Neither seeking nor giving forgiveness. Forever barring the door to improvement and progress.
Which may be the worst thing of all.
Worse even than our original offense. Because the one can be overcome, and the other cannot.
And the one weighs like a heavy and wearying burden, its pain never quite leaving our consciousness. A dull ache that crescendos in the quiet when we look within ourselves.
But it’s not supposed to be that way.
The way of forgiveness exists.
And I hope that girl found it. And I hope the rest of us do as well.
Recognize that you have done wrong, feel sorry for it, don’t do it again, ask God for forgiveness.
And get on with life. Get on with being what you were meant to be. Have the burden of guilt and regret lifted from your shoulders.
I hope that girl found that. And I hope the rest of us do as well.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2012
