Cleaning under the Rug

Forgiving hasn’t always come easy to me, but reconciliation? I’m all about that.

Let’s just forget about whatever hurt and pain has come between us and skip along. It’s fine. It’ll be just fine.

I’m a classic under-the-rug sweeper.

Unfortunately, that’s not how true reconciliation—or forgiveness—works. Whatever dirt I’ve swept under the proverbial rug just accumulates there, growing in volume and density, pushing its way through the braided strands of my carefully constructed, perfect looking life.

And the next time I’m hurt, there they are, all of those past hurts, still piled underneath the surface. There are all of the old wounds, unhealed, still festering.

Recently, I’d been carrying around a collection of minor blows from a dear friend. He had no idea his words and actions were wounding me. Instead, I just kept tucking them under the rug, putting on a careful smile and pretending everything was fine.

It’s just so much easier to sweep it all away and pretend, isn’t it? To put on a happy face, to walk into a room filled with former enemies, smile placidly, and shake hands, all while whatever cold injury you’re nursing forms its bitter root in you.

The trouble is that I can’t just forget about it. I can’t skip from injury to reconciliation. There’s too much dirt to deal with in between.

These offenses made the air between us electric, like a summer storm building on the horizon. I’m sure he sensed it, but neither of us bothered to address the growing tension between us.

That is until finally, one day, the rug failed me.

For as much as we talk about forgiving people and reconciling relationships in the church, I feel like I’ve only really experienced true reconciliation a handful of times. I’m just so bad at it. I have mountains of past offenses I’ve collected under rugs, just waiting to rise up and present themselves the next time I’m hurt.

See? They proclaim self-righteously. This is why you should never trust anyone. Let’s build our brick wall around this heart a little higher. 

Without forgiveness and reconciliation, the dust becomes concrete and mortar. From behind that wall, my heart hardens.

Maybe if I just forget about it, bury it, and run away from it, all that past hurt will just… go away? Time heals all wounds, right?

Does it?

Past wounds left unforgiven can fester for years.

In the last pages of Genesis, we learn that it had been decades since Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery in Egypt. So much time had passed. On the surface, it appeared as if the family had reconciled—Joseph even moved his large extended family to Egypt and fed them during the years of famine. But as soon as their father died, the brothers worried that Joseph still held a grudge against them.

Still conniving instead of just owning their fears, the brothers “sent word to Joseph, saying, ‘Your father left these instructions before he died: “This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.” Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father.’ When their message came to him, Joseph wept” (Genesis 50:16-17 NIV).

The brothers came to Joseph, humbling themselves before him, and Joseph forgave them. He reassured them that their families would be taken care of, and they all stayed there together in Egypt (Genesis 50:21-22). After all that time, the brothers were able to finally reconcile and live together in true peace!

I’m tired of building brick walls between me and my brothers and sisters in Christ. I’m tired of mounding up past offenses and planting bitter roots in all that dirt. I’m ready to take a jackhammer to my hardened heart.

In The Book of Forgiving, Archbishop Desmond Tutu says there are four steps to forgiveness. You have to admit wrong and acknowledge harm. You have to tell your story—this is what happened—and own the hurt—bear witness to the pain and damage caused. Then, you need to ask for and grant forgiveness. And last, you need to renew or release the relationship.

So instead of putting on a fake smile and pretending like everything was okay, I told my friend what he had said and done and how it made me feel. My friend confessed he had no idea or intention of hurting me. But now that we had talked, he could see how I felt, and he felt terrible about it. He apologized. Even though I struggle hard with forgiving, I told him I forgave him.

And then we sat and talked and laughed over coffee, talking about future plans and the promises of God, how good the Lord has been to us, and how much we have to look forward to along this journey together.

In that moment, I experienced the power of forgiveness. All that hurt, all that offense disappeared between us.

Something miraculous can happen when you’re finally able to forgive and reconcile a relationship: Where there was distance, there’s now a bond, formed through vulnerability, humility, and love. That bond is even stronger than the relationship was before the wound. It is welded together by trust and mutual respect. There is no space between, where doubt and fear can creep in, because love has conquered that injury.

The greatest example we have of this, of course, is Christ. “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:18-20 NIV).

I’m supposed to be a person of reconciliation, not an under-the-rug sweeper! I want to be done with the rug.

We can be done with the rug, because we have the power of the Holy Spirit in us. In big things and small, we can be people of reconciliation. We can stop living as injury collectors and be reconcilers, free of so much dirt under the rug.

Sweep it clean with me, would ya?

—Written by Sarah M. Wells. Used by permission from the author.