If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:8-9)
How many of us have seen the Internet advertisements for locating your long lost friends or classmates from high school? How could we miss them! One of the things that annoys me most about these reunion websites is the outrageous high fees one must pay for the privilege of obtaining an email address for anyone listed there.
I am amazed at how often I read of someone trying to rekindle an old flame. While the idea of returning to an old high school sweetheart at my age sounds romantic, I have no such desire. Personally, I'd be surprised if anyone remembered me much. However, there is one old flame I'd dearly love to get hold of for completely different reasons.
First, let me provide the setting. I went to high school in Anchorage, Alaska, until my senior year. To this day, I wish I had arranged to stay with relatives so that I could have graduated there. Instead, I came south with my family and finished high school in Oklahoma. But in my junior year there in Anchorage, I had begun school having freshly surrendered to the ministry. My commitment carried with it a far more serious desire to walk with Christ in very personal way.
Mine was not the only soul determined to follow Jesus that fall. One of the girls I had dated in the past, Katrina, had also made the decision to serve Him. This girl had previously become involved in some scandalous behavior, and would have induced me, but for my simple fear of getting involved in it. Let's face it: as a teenage boy, I was too scared of sex. At one point she did something that embarrassed and hurt me badly. I withdrew from seeing her outside of school.
I was slow to learn grace and forgiveness. When she accosted me at lunch during the first week of school that fall, she told me of her firm faith. She also professed a new respect for my refusal to yield to earlier temptations, and made signs of wanting to renew our friendship, at least. She made a symbolic peace offering, but I treated it with disdain. Then I made some totally wicked comment about her past in front of a buddy. Her shame was obvious, and I never gave it a second thought as she quickly walked away in tears.
During the rest of that year, I was so very busy I never noticed I hadn't seen much of her. There was so many things a 16 year old boy can do to keep himself occupied, and I never stopped. I dated a couple of new girls, got a car, kept my old motorcycle going, worked after school, and never slowed down to catch my breath. When the time came to leave Alaska that spring, I foolishly thought things would be great in Oklahoma, where the snow seldom lasted 3 days, compared to 7 months of the year (at the least) in Anchorage. There was a similar difference in depth when it fell; while an inch or two was a good bit in Oklahoma, Anchorage often saw that many feet in a single snowfall.
My senior year in Oklahoma was a forlorn affair. I had few friends, fewer dates, and felt completely lost. During that dismal year, I began to learn of forgiveness. I found myself frequently in need of it, as I continued bumbling socially, ripping hearts out without realizing it. My early attempts at preaching were probably the greatest failures of all. While the good spiritual leaders around me were indeed patient, it was clear I was hardly giving good evidence of my calling. That I was licensed to preach said more of their grace toward me, than it did of any grace I could share.
That next year in college, my conscience became rather afflicted, but it was hardly as much as the affliction as I dealt others with my casual arrogance. I was called of God and had a message, and woe be the listener who did not listen. At the same time, I saw everything crashing to the floor as I blundered socially at just about every opportunity. Toward my senior year of college, I began to get it, but there was an awful lot of work yet to be done. I consumed mass quantities of grace, yet seldom yielded any back.
Over the years, often I was called up short for my arrogance, time and again. One thing in particular stands out. While there were several different factors involved, I believe the one thing I can point to was the loss of my ability to run. For all those years, beginning in high school, I had carried on a fairly serious effort at being a distance runner. Personally, it was the like a drug -- it allowed me to push back the darkness of discomfort and embarrassment, and to lose myself in the rhythm of the roads and trails. There was a sense of accomplishment that here was one thing I could get right. Finally, it was discovered I had a serious birth defect in my knees. All those years, I was slowly shredding the cartilage bit by bit, without knowing it. Finally, the damage was beyond saving. I was crippled permanently.
I was forced to stop, and for once listen to God. All the pain of years of treading clumsily on hearts came back in a rush. The pain in my knees was just a small symptom in the flesh of what I had done to others in their spirits. I wept more for my sins than for my pain, great as it was then.
Once, in a fit of black depression, I was trying to express my sorrow to a friend, and one of those lucid moments of deep wisdom hit me. Having complained of my discomfort at some thing he had done, we were discussing my high degree of sensitivity when it came to me: The most painful scars on my heart were those from the wounds I had inflicted on others. I was sensitive because I had so very much for which to atone.
How often I have wished I could go back and undo the damage! Even today, some thirty years down the road, I still wish I could kneel at the feet of Katrina and apologize for publicly shaming her, a fellow Child of the King. It would hardly matter if she had since fallen back into sin, never to rise again to serving Jesus. Nor does it matter whether she even remembers, though I seriously doubt she forgot entirely. What matters is I have a debt to pay, a mess to clean up, a wound to salve.
What a wonderful world it would be if we could all make amends for our regrets. Yes, I've heard those supposedly great lines about "no regrets" -- that would have to be the depth of arrogance. It is foreign to our faith. Who dares forget that when we stand before Our God we must realize that, but for His grace, none would stand? As the song says:
Only by grace can we enter,
Only by grace can we stand.
Not by our human endeavor,
But by the Blood of the Lamb.
Here's to you, Katrina. Wherever you are right now, I pray as I often do that He fills your life with so much joy and peace that you never notice the wound I left you. When I slashed your heart, I was slashing His, too.
Ed Hurst
18 July 2003
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