You know when you get really sick and you need to throw up, and can kind of feel it coming to a head, but you think, “No, my stomach’s just a little upset. It will settle down” and then go looking for some Tums. This goes on for a while until you finally run to the bathroom, get on your knees, and let it go- as you should.
Lacking forgiveness is the same thing - “I’ll be O.K. He or she will burn in hell for what they did but, I’m O.K. Really. I just need to simmer in these juices… just a little longer- these feelings of wanting his or her house to suddenly burn down, etc. I can tell, I need this a little longer.”
Then, suddenly, you run to your closet (like when you ran to your bathroom), and you get on your knees, (just like when you were sick), and Dr. God holds you while you just let it out. Just let it all go. It’s not serving you. It’s just keeping you sick. It’s time to let it go.
These two stories can be helpful on your way to your closet.
Adapted from “A Tale of Two Americas” by Anand Giridharadas
"Where are you from?" said the pale, tattooed man. "Where are you from?"
It's September 21, 2001, 10 days after the worst attack on America since World War II. Everyone wonders about the next plane. People are looking for scapegoats. The president, the night before, pledges to "bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies."
And in a Dallas mini-mart- mini-mart surrounded by tire shops and strip joints a Bangladeshi immigrant works the register. Back home, Raisuddin Bhuiyan was a big man- an Air Force officer. But he dreamed of a fresh start in America. If he had to work briefly in a mini-mart to save up for I.T. classes and his wedding in two months, so be it.
Then, on September 21, that tattooed man enters the mini-mart. He holds a shotgun. Raisuddin knows the drill: He puts cash on the counter. But this time, the man doesn't touch the money. "Where are you from?" he asks. "Excuse me?" Raisuddin answers. His accent betrays him. The tattooed man shoots Raisuddin in revenge for 9/11.
Behind the counter, he lays in blood. He cups a hand over his forehead to keep in the brains on which he'd gambled everything. He recites verses from the Koran, begging his God to live. He senses he is dying.
He didn't die. His right eye left him. His fiancée left him. His landlord, the mini-mart owner, kicked him out. Soon he was homeless and 60,000 dollars in medical debt, including a fee for dialing for an ambulance. But Raisuddin lived.
His path forward would be difficult. The day after admitting him, the hospital discharged him. His right eye couldn't see. He couldn't speak. Metal peppered his face. But he had no insurance, so they bounced him.
He eventually found telemarketing work, then he became an Olive Garden waiter. He later found a man who taught him database administration. He got part-time I.T. gigs. Eventually, he landed a six-figure job at a blue-chip tech company in Dallas.
Years later, he asked himself what he could do to repay his God and become worthy of this second chance. He eventually came across a story about the man who shot him - Mark Stroman.
From a distance, Mark Stroman was always the spark of parties, always making girls feel pretty. Always working, no matter what drugs or fights he'd had the night before. But he'd always wrestled with demons. He entered the world through the three gateways that doom so many young American men: bad parents, bad schools, and bad prisons. His mother told him, regretfully, as a boy that she'd been just 50 dollars short of aborting him.
He was getting arrested before he shaved, first juvenile, then prison. He became a casual white supremacist and, like so many around him, a drug-addicted and absent father. And then, before long, he found himself on death row, for in his 2001 counter-jihad, he had shot not one mini-mart clerk, but three. Only Raisuddin survived.
Strangely, death row was the first institution that left Stroman better. His old influences quit him and He found God.