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I just fin­ished The Shack by William P. Young.  I have been avoid­ing this book like the plague, mostly because so many Chris­tians were read­ing it.  No offense if you are one.  It’s just I’ve been treated bet­ter by proud con­victs than most Chris­tians.  It wasn’t until my Mum told me that she had read it and thought I might not be ready for this kind of book that got me inter­ested.  Ok, so it was more of a – “Did she just say no?  I must rebel!” kind of thing.

It was really odd.  I couldn’t get any­one to tell me about the book!  They didn’t want to “spoil it”.  One Twit­ter friend did email me her thoughts on the book.  She said to read it for what it is: a fic­tional book and not to try “to the­o­log­i­cally dis it at every point”.  I would get more out of it.

So I did.

I’ll tell you right now.  She was dead on.  I couldn’t get over how much I adored how he char­ac­ter­ized God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.  It was an awe­some con­cept!!  It explained things in a way that I never “got” before.  I was talk­ing to my brother about it this week­end and he asked me, “What’s dif­fer­ent about this that you finally saw ‘it’, whereas before this book, you didn’t get ‘it’?  Why hasn’t any­one else been able to do that?”  And I still don’t know, but I won­der that myself.  Maybe it was just my ‘ah-ha’ book.  Prob­a­bly not though.

I found myself say­ing things like, “Of course that’s the way it’s sup­pose to be….stupid Chris­tians.”  But then again, I have been one of those stu­pid Chris­tians myself.

It’s hard to believe that we were fired from our church exactly a year ago.  It had been a long time since I had felt so betrayed.  The lead pastor’s wife chuck­led at my tears of pain.  Promises that were made were bro­ken mali­ciously.  Friends at the church were lied to about our fir­ing.  Our chil­dren were just as dev­as­tated as we were. 

I have been angry.

I was able to for­give a lot of what was done and said, but until very recently I wasn’t able to for­give one per­son.  The pastor’s wife.  She was pointed in her mali­cious­ness, so I felt like I had the right be angry at her.  She was wrong, but I was wrong by hold­ing on to that.  I was actu­ally tying myself to her by hold­ing on to that ‘right’.  I was finally able to look at her and real­ize, how sad must her sit­u­a­tion have been that she felt the need to be so cruel to another human being?  She must have been in such a dark place that lash­ing out at me made her feel in con­trol of some­thing.  Maybe?  I don’t know.  I do pray that she’s not still in that dark, lonely place.

I have for­given her and any­one else involved in that whole sit­u­a­tion.  I yearn for the days when we attended the church as reg­u­lar atten­dees; sur­rounded by friends and loved ones.  It hasn’t been the same since.  I lost a lot of friends dur­ing that time, but I hear they are still enjoy­ing their time at the church and that’s won­der­ful.  We are now attend­ing a church that does a lot of com­mu­nity out­reach and that is where our heart is.  There are some great peo­ple there (a lot of them from our old church!).

I look for­ward to cel­e­brat­ing this Christ­mas with love and peace, which we did not have last year.  It’s been a long process of heal­ing, but I’m used to long processes such as these.  It’s per­plex­ing and painful at the time, but you come out a stronger and bet­ter per­son once you’re through it.

“…since most of our hurts come through rela­tion­ships so will our heal­ing, and I know that grace rarely makes sense for those look­ing in from the out­side.” –pg.11