Reconciliation

As a forewarning, this is going to be a journal-ish post, so if you came looking for sports, politics, or something with a video attached to it, then come back later.

In January I learned that a girl I had dated for a long time was going to be getting married. She and I went through the whole spectrum of feelings that you can feel while dating someone, from very good to very bad, back and forth, several times over. Until about October, it had ended up on the bad side of things and then had turned into nothing at all. After erasing her completely from my life and having no contact from May until October, I decided to write her a letter expressing my regret for how I had handled things and wishing her well. I think it was prompted by seeing her at institute one week, and I did my best to not make it one of those weak apologies where I said "I'm sorry for what I did, but if you hadn't..." and just left it up to her. She responded in kind, and since then we've had few interactions, but of what has occurred in the last six months or so, it has all been very positive.

She dated her husband for about two months before they got engaged and were married this last weekend. I thought I would be more adversely affected by her engagement and subsequent marriage than I was. At the time that I found out that she had gotten engaged in January, I was dating someone. When I told that girl about it, I think she also expected more of a negative reaction. I even thought maybe last weekend when I went to the reception that it would be a little bit harder for me. It wasn't, wasn't even hard at all. In fact, the only part that I didn't like about going to the reception was that I had to leave the beach a little bit earlier than I really wanted to before heading over to see her.

Yesterday I was sitting in sacrament meeting just thinking about all of this, and why I might have been feeling so at ease about everything and I think it really just comes down to reconciliation. I wrote that letter to her, and later I even wrote another one to her parents. A few months ago I saw her mom and dad in an endowment session, and at the point where there is audience participation, her dad tapped me on the shoulder to have me join him and his wife in that part of the ceremony. They also happened to be the first two people I saw when I arrived at the reception on Saturday. The bride looked beautiful, and it was nice to see her family and friends that I hadn't seen in a few years. It surprised me to remember how connected I was to all of those people, and how much I really cared about them.

There were a lot of things with her that I wish had gone differently, but of all the things that I'm grateful for that went right, it's knowing that we had both put aside our hurt feelings and chose to reconcile and extend forgiveness to one another. It was so nice to see her and be genuinely excited to see her happy and moving on with her life. And I was so glad that her dad was also the last person I saw on the way out; and it was nice to hug him, and hear from him and say to him, "I love you."

We can hold on to grudges, wrongs, past hurts, and often it can be with good reason. Sometimes getting to the point of wanting to extend forgiveness does require the process of time to heal our wounds, but the active pursuit of forgiveness is something that we choose to experience. I don't think it comes without our persistent effort to arrive at that moment of reconciliation. While I was thinking about all this, it made me think of the verses from the sermon on the mount, when Jesus says "love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, pray for them that despitefully use you; that ye may be children of our Father which is in heaven." I've had some uninvited opportunities to work on this doctrine in the past year, and it surprises me to no end how effective prayer is in experiencing the release that forgiveness brings. Whatever our reasons might be, it's not worth putting off the sweet feelings of peace that can be ours by working to restore the former compatibilities.

It's nice to know that I've come to terms with that part of my life, because it dominated the better part of 2002-2007. Although we'll probably never have a relationship again with any kind of consistent contact, I'm glad knowing that we left things right. And I'm so glad to know that I can be happy for her without any reservations about my own future.