When you forgive, you in no way change the past – but you sure do change the future.
Bernard Meltzer
Last week I visited Belfast with work, it had been a place Lady L and I had considered before we planned our Irish road trip. I have to admit although the people were lovely it isn’t a place I would think about for a holiday.
What astounded us was there is still so much hurt in the communities, 43 Peace Walls still exist. These walls run the lengths of communities to separate the Loyalists from the Catholics people. The walls built so high that no one can climb or throw a petrol bomb over. Alongside these walls are murals on house gable ends commemorating battles and Ireland’s violent history. There were some murals about peace too but they seem recent. The leader of the council said “the people of Northern Ireland should start thinking more about the future than they do the past”.
The murals mark territory saying which area it belonged to and warning people who enter that violence will be used if they don’t behave. Here the peace walls open and close their gates morning and night to keep communities apart for what they say is to make people feel safe, but surely it also stops them from building relationships and healing hurts too. Some of the separated communities are families and friends ripped apart through the troubles in ways I could never imagine. How many tears (on both sides) have been shed and how many people lost loved ones, lives and peace through it all.
Why is it that as humans we have such compassion, the ability to love so much but when things go wrong we can hate and hurt so easy. That capacity to love quickly flipped to hate without a seconds hesitation.
My Dad used to say that little things such as words said, or not said, wanting different things or just plain stubbornness can find that people who once loved each other never speak for the rest of their lives. I have seen this first hand in my own life, and the upset builds it’s own peace walls in hearts just as real as I those I visited in Belfast. The walls being defences to try and stop hurting in situations which seem unrepairable.
But I don’t want to live behind any peace walls, even if others do. So in my life, I am going to choose everyday not to hold onto the pain (no matter how hard) and not hate people who are building peace walls in between myself and them, or who paint murals of meanness in words to tell me how much I have disappointed them or annoyed them for needing something else in life……. No…. Instead I will pray that they find joy, happiness and peace and maybe forgive me for what they feel I have done to them. I will still love these people even if that seems difficult some days.
I can only do this as I have such incredible people around me, who stand with me, they are the rocks I lean on, when I let go they hold on for me, loving me through all the mess. God put these people in my life and I will forever be grateful for them and I will try my best to be there for them if they ever need me, loving them through it too. As in the end I want to live every day, loving not hating, seeing more good than bad and celebrating the future not just the past………
wherethehellisgillian 