Forgiveness can remain unfinished
because love remains unfinished.
Grief remains unfinished.
We remain unfinished.
There is no clean edge
where the hurting stops
and mercy begins.
They overlap.
The hand that trembles
can still open.
The heart that remembers
can still release
what it cannot repair.
Some mornings
I will forgive.
Some nights
I will find the old wound
awake again,
asking to be counted,
asking me to remember
what it cost.
I will remember.
I will not call it nothing.
I will not call it healed
because I need
a better ending.
I will let grief
remain grief.
I will let the scar
remain visible.
And when anger returns,
I will not call
forgiveness a lie.
I will forgive again.
Not from the beginning.
From wherever
I am standing.
There are wounds
older than memory.
There are sorrows
we will carry
all the way home.
Perhaps mercy
is not putting them down.
Perhaps mercy
is learning
how to carry them
without placing them
in someone else's hands.
Forgiveness can remain unfinished.
Love can remain unfinished.
Grief can remain unfinished.
We can remain unfinished.
Christ was wounded too.
And when he rose,
the wounds were still there.
The nails had left
their testimony.
The spear had left
its mark.
Resurrection did not erase
what had been done.
It revealed
that what had been done
would not have
the final word.
So I bring him
what remains unfinished.
The wound I received.
The wound I gave.
The names I cannot remember.
The names I cannot forget.
The ones who wounded me.
The ones I wounded.
My anger.
My grief.
My failure.
My forgiveness,
unfinished.
I place all of it
at the foot of the Cross.
Not because suffering is holy.
Because Christ
entered suffering
and would not let death
keep it.
Father, forgive them.
Forgive the wounded.
Forgive the ones
who did not know
what they were carrying.
Forgive the ones
who knew
and failed anyway.
Forgive me.
And teach me
to forgive
as I have been forgiven.
The wound may be older
than any of us.
But it is not older
than God.
It may follow us
all our days.
But it will not follow us
through the grave.
For the wounded Christ
is risen.
And in the kingdom
toward which we are walking,
every wound
will be known,
every tear
will be gathered,
and what we could not finish
in one another
will be finished
in Him.
