go on and lose it

There are obviously a lot of differences between guys and girls.
Some are subtle, but some aren't.
One difference I've noticed lately is that girls can hold a freaking grudge, while guys know a little bit about how to let go. Of course, these aren't universal statements, but run with me.
This is something I'm trying to reverse in my life because in the end, I believe it comes down to forgiveness and how easily we hand it out.


[As a disclaimer, everything said from here on out is based on my own personal experience, and I'm a girl anyways. Really, I'm allowed to say these things by default.]


Girls are so unforgiving. We can hold a grudge like nobody's business, and we can send you on guilt trips and hold things over your head for eternity. We're so nasty sometimes. I'm learning lately to redirect myself away from gossip and bad-mouthing, and in that process, I'm realizing how often we actually do it. We spend so much of our time tearing each other down, instead of building each other up. In that process, we basically give guys and anyone else the right to say the exact same things about us. It's really sad that I'm about to use an example from Mean Girls, but Tina Fey says in that movie that by calling each other sluts and whores, it totally gives guys the idea that that's okay. It's a valid example, and it makes a good point. Talking crap about each other does nothing good, and it surely doesn't teach us anything about forgiveness.


I'm not saying guys never do any of that, but they're just not known for "gossip." I really don't think that guys have the same conversations when girls are around as they do when it's just them. So really I can't say what they do, but I know several guys who are much better at forgiving than I am. It's a slow process, but I'm learning that most of my good male friends are good about forgiveness, at least to me. I'm learning that if I wrong you today, tomorrow we're still friends. If we fight today, that has nothing to do with tomorrow. We're still cool. It's okay. Life is good.


Okay, so in Matthew 18:21-22, Peter is asking Jesus how many times we should forgive people who wrong us. We all know how this turns out. Peter asks if seven is a good number (like 7 is this huge, phenomenal, magic number. Can you even imagine how lonely we would all be if we only forgave each other 7 times?), and Jesus being as cool as He is, goes "Psh, yea right. Seven?! Not even close. Try seventy times that...duh" (yes, this is the way Jesus speaks in my mind). The story that follows is a good example because as I read it, the only thing I can think of is "How freaking selfish is that servant? I mean, his debt gets cleared just out of mercy and he can't even turn around and clear a much smaller debt for a brother?! How lame." And of course, halfway into this, I realize that that's who I am.

We expect so much forgiveness. For every mistake we make, we expect it to be okay. No one will die because we mess up. There is forgiveness, and yet we can't seem to turn around it give it away as freely. You mess one thing up for me, and I will hold it against you for a looooong time, friend. So a part of learning to forgive, for me, is to forget what you've done to hurt my feelings in the past and to start over. I want to give up forgiveness easily, so that we can keep moving forward.

P.S. I hope my use of correct punctation, sentence structure and capital letters can help you guys feel like you're reading the blog of someone who's actually older than 8. You're welcome.