Thou Shalt Not Kill

"Bunny, I want you to know, when we get to the church, if you start across the aisle to kill anybody, I’m going to trip you.”

I can’t believe those words spoken in a tender, but serious, voice were part of my life. I laugh now at the image my brother-in-law and I must have presented standing at the kitchen sink, two mostly normal people, looking out the window, conversing in matter-of-fact tones unbefitting the topic. 

Cecil was referring to my homicidal threats made the previous day when I was told my ex-husband planned to attend Tara’s service.  Funerals have a way of attracting people from the past.  Some are more welcome than others.

Upon hearing the news, heartache for my daughter resurfaced. Smoldering anger reignited as I recalled her life-long struggle with the wound of abandonment.  I thought I had forgiven and forgotten, but my intense reaction to this reemergence at the sacred time of her death proved me wrong. Sometimes it’s easy to forgive at a distance, but not so easy close up.

Perhaps it was Cecil's loving tone that inspired me, maybe it was the wild fluctuation of emotions that accompany bereavement. In spite of his stated intention to tackle me, I was suddenly overwhelmed with affection. I desperately wanted to convey the depth of my fondness and my appreciation to Cecil for his support over the years, especially during this nightmare. Perhaps it would have been best had I postponed that conversation until I was thinking just a tad more clearly. 

“Cecil, I've always thought if I wanted someone killed, I could count on you.”

Did those words really come from my mouth?  Whatever made me think Cecil would hear that as a compliment? I was obviously under the influence of grief. It's true that in the South if we love you, we might spray paint your name on a bridge, but we certainly don’t tell a man we love him because he would be our go-to guy if, as we say, someone “needed killin'." 

If Cecil thought I had dropped a few floors from the top, he didn't show it. He must have understood sorrow addled my brain and led to my bizarre commendation.  Instead, he gently reassured me that of course I could count on him, but it didn't need to be "today." People will say anything to keep a grief-crazed mother calm. 

The Cox men are men of few words. Their vocabularies might not always be tactful or politically correct, but they get the job done.  In spite of Cecil's choice of action verb followed by a personal pronoun, that morning standing in my kitchen, my murder spree momentarily in check, he gave me some of the best spiritual advice I’ve ever received. He ended our absurd conversation with these words of wisdom:  “Bunny, sometimes you just have to look the devil in the eye and say f--- you.”  I think that’s Cecil for “Get thee behind me Satan.” 

The thing that was most shocking was not Cecil’s choice of words, but my eventual realization that the devil I needed to look in the eye and curse was not my intended murder victim, but my own inability, after all these years, to forgive. 

Reflections:

"To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you."--Lewis B. Smedes

"When a deep injury is done us, we never recover until we forgive."--Alan Paton

Ephesians 4:27 Anger gives foothold to the devil.

"You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who have hurt you and feel the power to wish them well." --Lewis B. Smedes


--Is there someone in my life who is difficult to forgive? Why?


--What are my thoughts about the statement that forgiveness is the road to freedom? Do I agree? Why? Why not?


--Is it easier for me to forgive others than to forgive myself?


Practice:  


The Prayer of St. Francis:


Lord,
Make me an instrument of your peace;
Where there is hatred, let me plant love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.
Grant that I may not so much seek to be comforted as to comfort;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.