love, do good, bless, pray… but don’t do this.

Every day in April, I prayed for someone I didn’t like. and I wanted to follow up with some thoughts.

One day, a few weeks into May, I was telling Captain Hilary about how weird the person I’d prayed for was acting. Texting me, being nice to me, and even adding me as a friend on Facebook. She kind of looked at me with a “what did you expect?” look and said, “well you did pray for them every day…” and I thought about it and realized she was right.

Anyway, back to realtime. I’ve been processing this whole breakup thing. Mostly I find the experience fascinating because it’s not a situation I typically find myself in, so I have been observing myself carefully. When I first received the Facebook breakup (just gonna keep throwing that out there..) I kept figuring out when I would respond to it. At first it was a vague time frame (i.e. “when I cool down,” “when I know I won’t say something mean,” etc.). Then it turned into a very concrete time frame (i.e. “next saturday,” or “in five more days,” etc).

This whole time I’ve been praying for him, because “pray for those who mistreat you.” and breaking up via Facebook message falls in that category for me. I started thinking about the last time I was praying consistently for someone I wanted to push off a cliff (ask me how I REALLY feel)..

and I realized that Jesus never told me to seek these people out to give them a rundown of their failures and my gracious prayers. He did, elsewhere, say that if your brother sins against you to deal with it in a proper and holy way. But nothing about people who just hate you.. or who you hate, because let’s face it. Not liking me is the quickest way to get you on my “people that suck” list.

Looking back on my life, the people I have completely forgiven and been reconciled with have all stemmed from silent, private, never spoken of prayers for grace. Because by the time I have climbed my way out of the pit of angerhurtdislike… etc I have shed every burden of hurt, every article of pain and every need to deliver the final blow. Sometimes verbally extending forgiveness is a final blow, and not in that Jesus “kill them with kindness” way. Instead we sometimes use it as an attempt to show them how much better we are than them because we are able to forgive them.

I am, however, talking about people whose actions have severed relationships (both friend and romantic territory) with a clear finality. When we are wronged within a friendship.. that’s when the “if your brother sins against you..” thing comes in. But I guess humility is taking the final blow, which is yours to deliver with great joy.. and gently hand it to God, knowing that if it is his will for you to be the person to put them in their place regarding their selfish nature or inability to be sensitive.. then he’ll hand it back to you. but in my experience, he reserves that for other people and we rarely even hear about that. Which kinda sucks, because if I don’t get to hurt them can’t I at least watch someone else do it?

So anyway. Every time I think about finally responding to that message or reaching out with a thorny olive branch of peace hoping to poke someone.. I go through the list in my head.

Love.
Do good.
Bless.
Pray.

Prayer is not magic, Madeleine L’Engle wrote, it’s an act of love. For our enemies who mistreat us.

Easy enough..