Whatever you retain will be retained

We retain them. All the hurts and pains of life, but what if we could forgive and let them go? Perhaps then we could dance freely and lightly.

It’s so easy to do. Holding on to the hurt others have done. The brain seems to retain it, keeping it and holding it tight as a clenched fist. Perhaps it’s some self-defense mechanism.

‘Been there, done that, now I will self-protect.’ 

The problem is that whatever we hold onto can gather a life of its own.

One trauma coalesces with other traumas and makes connections that weren’t there. Current hurts connect with past hurts, and our brain is off to the races.

False conclusions can be made, and then those beliefs join with other beliefs, and we create a powerful belief system where our soul takes up residence.

Living freely and lightly seems impossible under the weight of this pain upon our tired shoulders.

We have retained what needed to have been let go of, and the longer we keep it and hold it, the deeper it digs into the neurons of our brain and the streams of our soul.

Whatever you retain

What have you retained in the container of your heart, mind, and soul?

It could be good things. Hopefully, it is.

Promises of God. Moments of delight, times when hope was fulfilled. All of which you have stored away and retained.

But the brain has a negativity bias. We have this brain that has a habit of being like Teflon for the good and Velcro for the bad. So we cling to the negative, and it shapes our thinking in ways that naturally look for the negative.

There was a time when for the followers of Jesus, it must have felt like a giant roll of velcro had spun around their lives.

All the hopes had been crushed. The dreams had turned to nightmares. The miracle man, the one with all the power, who had walked on water and worked words into them that had exploded their lives with hope, was now dead.

He had been brutally murdered, and all of them had thought spirals that went back to when they had let him down, denied him of presence, of commitment. Velcro was winning over Teflon.

What were they to do with this pain? So what do we do with pain?

For the most part, we retain it with the habitual strength of a piece of velcro.

But a resurrected Jesus steps into the room.

Spear wound in his side and nail holes in his hands, arms, and feet. Scars and scratches adorn his body. But there is also something mystically glorious about his new appearance.

He breathes on us and says …

‘If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them;
if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’ John 20:22-23

They had a lot of events to process.

The brutality of the mocking soldiers. The jeers of the crowd. The cries of pain and agony. It was still fresh in their thinking.

Then there was their response. How they had walked away or had even betrayed Jesus. All of them had their burden of guilt velcroing to their brains.

Jesus comes with the direction to forgive and not to retain.

Forgive others; forgive yourself.

Don’t retain or hold into yourself the hurts you have done and those done to you by others.

Forgive others; forgive yourself.

The word ‘retain’ in Greek is the word krateó and it is an energy word and means to be strong or rule.

It’s used in this way

I am strong, mighty, hence: I rule, am master, prevail
I obtain and take hold of
I hold, I hold fast.
Place under one’s grasp (seize hold of, put under control).

Can you sense the energy locked up in those definitions?

I have a retainer

I have a vast retaining wall near where I live. Built years ago, it holds back the soil supporting a busy road. If it wasn’t there, the earth would fall away, and the road would collapse.

But more so, it’s a retainer of energy. The force of the soil and water is held back. Designed by engineers to hold a specific weight capacity, it is strong and holds fast the energy that wants to spill out.

I think I have a retainer in my body.

It’s this place in my heart where I have chosen to retain all the little and the big hurts. Carefully designed and built, I store behind it so much rubbish. The things I could have gotten rid of years ago I have hoarded away just in case I need them for future self-defense.

But it’s a rubbish dump: festering experiences, pus-filled wounds, toxic waste.

I never want to go there, but I often do and pick over the past.

What happened yesterday was just like what happened twenty years ago. So I merge the two with the twenty.

This toxic waste leaks out into my everyday life.

If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it. Richard Rohr

It depresses me, keeps me anxious, has me on high alert for similar experiences, and prevents me from dancing and freedom.

It’s Cinderella’s ugly stepsisters who say you’ll never go to the dance.

Learning to live freely and lightly

Jesus, at the start of his earthly ministry, says these words

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion?
Come to me. Get away with me, and you’ll recover your life.
I’ll show you how to take a real rest.
Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it.
Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.
I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you.
Keep company with me, and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” Matthew 11:28-30

Perhaps I have held onto things that have weighed my dancing feet down.

I was always meant to dance freely and lightly, but perhaps the retainer I have created has held me back.

Jesus points to this as a choice to hold on or let go. To retain or to forgive.

And it’s not easy when the hurt has gone deep.

Some hurt needs deep dislodging work before they become free enough to be released. But you’re never going to dance while you are manacled to a retaining wall.

Dismantling the retaining wall

It takes careful and considered work to dismantle the retaining wall. There is so much rubbish and energy behind it that ripping it down would cause downstream destruction.

The soul’s work is slow, steady and could be considered an act of beauty and restoration in its own right.

Little bit by little bit, we dismantle the self-made retaining wall from the top down.

Forgiving takes time and tenderness. It’s a sacred act of self-hygiene—a purification of what has tarnished the beautiful cup.

Only one who has forgiven all and not retained anything has the tenderness capable of helping us.

Jesus steps into our brokenness and breathes life on us.

 

Quotes to consider

• We can only live inside the flow of forgiveness if we have stood under the constant waterfall of needed forgiveness ourselves. Richard Rohr. Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps
• As long as we don’t recognize and forgive faults in ourselves, we’ll find an individual or group to project them onto. Richard Rohr -Job and the Mystery of Suffering
• He condemned nothing in haste and without taking circumstances into account. He said, “Examine the road over which the fault has passed.” Victor Hugo Les Misérables
• If it is true that forgiveness is the most therapeutic fact in all of life, then guilt must be the most destructive. We are simply not built for it David Seamands
• To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. C.S. Lewis
• If we really want to love we must learn how to forgive. Mother Teresa
• Forgiveness is a choice. You choose not to be held hostage in the present to the injustices that occurred in the past. Shirley Glass
• Forgiving is not a single event, but a gradual process of increasing compassion and reducing resentment. Shirley Glass
• You forgive so that you can finally get rid of the excess emotional baggage that has been weighing you down and holding you back; so you can be free to do and be whatever you decide instead of stumbling along according to the script painful past experiences wrote for you. Dr. Sidney B. Simon and Suzanne Simon

Questions to answer

1. Think of a retaining wall near where you live. How mush energy is contained behind that wall?
2. What have you retained in your life that leaks poison into your thinking?
3. Why is it hard to forgive?

Further reading

Barry Pearman

Photo by Karyna Panchenko on Unsplash

 

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