Betrayal
The universal experience that binds us all…
A late night call from a loved one in my world had me thinking about the times we’ve all been betrayed. While I listened to the poured out frustrations and justifications that broke upon reality, the pain of trusting our hearts to others made me wonder at the cost. Is it worth it? How often do we know our best friend/lover will be with us through everything, only to crash upon the rocks of them deciding we’re expendable, or worse that our love is so easily bought that any lie, any deceit won’t make us recoil in surprise and disbelief.
Is there a safe place where hearts find rest? Where we are not tested, not tried, not asked to trust again? And how many times do we trust? I know Jesus said to forgive seventy times seven times, but doesn’t that infer that we will be betrayed four hundred and ninety times? Perhaps the transgressions fall from different hands, but I do believe there are days to stay and then there are days to leave it behind us. Leave them behind us.
I will admit right here that my closest friends have at one time or another failed me, and one friend is wandering far from home. Do I wait for her to come to her senses as I see her being swallowed by a cult-like movement? What do you do when you’ve been crossed, with your boundary breached? Forgiveness is beautiful, but it doesn’t mean we remain in the friendship or marriage. Forgiveness often occurs long after we’ve let them go.
I’ve recently had a dear friend come back to me, years after I mulled things over in my mind. I felt taken for granted far too many times, and we would compare our lives and see whose was more fraught with difficulty. Not healthy at all, and the phone which had filled our days with texts, calls and observations turned silent. Only years down the line could I manage to try and forgive, only to have another go at forgiving days later.
If the betrayal is especially deep then the forgiveness is more dearly bought and won. We wander through haze filled days of disorientation hoping our hearts would just stop. Stop hurting. Or simply stop. Marriages built on honesty fall apart at certain betrayals, or the person staying in decides to try just one more time. So many hurting people are astonished by the soul in its aching. Teenage breakups have nothing on divorce or reconciliation in marriages.
We cut our teeth on our first loves. Romantic love. If only we would heed the statistics that say it rarely works out and ends in happily ever after, but we arrogantly believe no one has felt as uniquely loved and in love as we. After wearing my ex-boyfriend’s bracelet to school weeks after our break-up, the cute guy in the row behind me said I needed to remove it and set that aside. I suppose I wasn’t ready to let go of that first love just yet, but chagrined I finally stored it away. Only to look for the next heartbreaker.
Those first forays into love teach us resiliency for the one who will truly hurt us later, and an almost easy acceptance is granted to those of us who weren’t cheated on. They simply decided to move on without us. Those aren’t the ones we forgive. The current boyfriend who had sex with another or ten others is where we decide what to accept and when to turn away. Those hurt. Those require forgiveness, but I don’t think we should rush headlong into that.
Lean in to the pain. I think we have to suffer the sleepless nights wondering why we weren’t special or wonderful enough to hold them to ourselves alone. Even as we know it never lay within our power to keep them from straying. Feeling in control looks good, but we only have power over our own hearts. We decide if we’ll trample on another’s soul, but if they choose to run roughshod over ours? We need to feel it, learning the pain and knowing we won’t accept it again.
Then the blessings of forgiveness can arrive. We might make faltering steps at forgiveness at the first transgression, but it takes a moment by moment decision to suffer the indignity and accept it. The wound is no less, but we release the person. I can’t say I forget, though I wish I had the ability; but maybe forgiveness says we choose to let this go. Maybe not four hundred and ninety times, but once. Twice? That’s entirely up to us to stay or leave at that point. If we leave what do we seek?
Another person with shining eyes and promises of honesty, integrity and full disclosures? Then when we do find safe harbor with a friend, lover or spouse, we hope for the best. We forgive the rest. For ourselves and for them, too. Forgiveness is next to godliness? No? I think that saying is far more fitting, though.
