#5 Broken Magic

Sometimes, much like Mrs. Zimmerman, our magic becomes broken. The personal drive to live and love becomes drowned out in life’s overwhelming hurts. What do we do then? How do we get up and get our magic back? What do you do when you’ve hurt, and the hurt feels like a little too much to come back from? I’m not sure if I can truly yoink you out of the pit you’re in today, but perhaps I can at least give you a roadmap to recovery. 

We’ve all been hurt at some point in our lives. Whether it’s a betrayal, an unkind word, or a dark place, we all sometimes get stuck in a deep, yucky pit. No human on this earth is a complete stranger to hurting. And sometimes those hurts send us reeling, sprawled out on the floor with no strength to bring us back to our feet. Where do we go from there? I think the first place to go is inside of ourselves. It’s so easy to blame our surroundings. We say our job is getting old, our house is wearing us out, or even the cat is becoming a nuisance. 

All those things are probably true, but how strongly we react shows us that something deeper is at work. As someone once told me, spilling a cup of coffee is never something you want to happen, but if it makes you want to hurl the mug at the wall, or collapse to the floor in tears, you have to acknowledge that there may be other things going on in your head. The first step is to acknowledge that your head is messy. 

And this can be weirdly tough to do. I’m the one writing these words, agreeing completely that this is the way things should be, but my first reaction is still usually to try to figure out what needs to change out in the world. It is always what my mind goes to. We have to keep returning to this idea that the world doesn’t need to change, we do. As we can start to get this drilled into our skulls, we can speed up the process of recovering from all the hurts that hold us down. 

So now that we have discovered where the problem comes from, where do we go from there? How do we handle the hurts in such a way that they don’t control us? I think the simple answer is to walk through the process of forgiving. Now, nobody naturally wants to forgive. It’s completely natural to want to hold onto whatever is drowning you. It’s a weird thing, but it’s completely normal. It almost feels like changing will make things worse in some way. People are weird sometimes.

But what if part of the reason that we hold onto those things is because we don’t fully understand forgiveness? We often act like forgiving is the last step to burying those bad things forever. We call them scars like those bumps and bruises we get from playing outside (for those of you that were forced to play outside as kids. Join me in feeling old.) We act like forgiving is saying “yeah, there are still marks there. They don’t hurt or anything, they’re just sort of…there.” But what if forgiveness wasn’t that? What if forgiveness was more like refusing to get even. I’m trying to put this into the analogy. I don’t know if I can. But basically, forgiveness is letting go of the need to let that hurt travel any further. Whether that’s the need to get even, to live in fear of that hurt, or letting it affect anything else in your life, you put the hurt in a box and let it stay in the attic. 

And what I like to remind myself is that this isn’t saying that it never hurt. That’s too naive for me. It still hurt like getting hit by a bus! That fact will never change. And you don’t have to wait for the hurting to stop to forgive. It can still be a fresh wound. But forgiving is saying you won’t do anything to try to make things “right.” Justice is not yours to serve, and the entire hurt is no longer yours to care about, outside of the need to heal yourself and move forward. It may still hurt for a bit, and you may need to get away to recover, but you are no longer trying to make that hurt anyone else’s hurt. 

And forgiveness is not at all saying that what happened was right. No, it’s still wrong. Someone else may have done a bad thing. You may have even done a bad thing, but forgiving means not doing anything more about what happened. You aren’t punishing yourself, you aren’t trying to punish them, and you aren’t holding onto all that hate for yourself or them. You’re simply letting it all go. 

I know this sounds silly and abstract, but if you take some time to write these hurts and forgivenesses down, you may start to feel different. And it’s important not to rush this process. You may be tempted to think that jotting down the words “I forgive Arthur for kicking me in the knee last week” will make all the icky feelings go away. No, it may still hurt for a bit. You may have to take a while to hurt and to admit that it wasn’t right. (And if he kicked you hard, that knee may hurt for a while too.) But, in due time, you will come around and truly let go. Time heals all wounds if you let it. Eventually you will get to the other side, and regain the magic that naturally bubbles up from within you. 

So that’s what I pray for you: that you walk down the road to forgiveness. That you take the time to forgive those who hurt you, and to reflect on the hurts that are holding you hostage. I pray for your release, that those icky hurts will go away, and that you are granted the strength and grace to forgive. And I pray that you regain your magic, because your magic is powerful indeed! 

Until next time

May Peace be your Guide.