Freeing the Caged Bird

There were blood stains on the wall. The broken piece of glass was still in his hand. Amidst all this, he lay quivering and shivering trying to explain that it was an inadvertent action; he would never want to harm his only child.

She looks at him in disbelief; her angry gaze showed all the emotions that were ravaging her from the inside.

"How could you?" She demanded, not showing any sign of believing the explanation.

"Am sorry, it was a mistake... it really was," with tears rolling down his eyes, and a huge lump on his throat, that was all he could bring himself to say.

The events prior to this were replaying in his head... amidst the angry words he and his wife exchanged, he had forgotten that he had picked a piece of broken glass so as to throw it away.

But, in the heat of the moment, in a bid to respond to some angry comment coming from his antagonist, he carelessly threw the bottle onto the face of his three year old, who lay on the bed, somewhat nonplussed to the events obtaining in the room.

As the innocent cry played again and again in his mind, with blood oozing from its beautiful face, he kicked himself against the hospital wall.

"How could I? What kind of father am I?"

He would never bear to see the scar on her pretty face. How was he ever going to explain that he had marred her lovely visage?

He locked himself in a cage of helpless blame, wishing to undo the hands of time... if only wishes were horses.

There is more than one scar in the story: whereas one is a mistake, the other two are a choice. 

Over time, as I look at my own life with its fair share of mistakes, I realize that perhaps the one gift that we never accept is that of forgiveness, that of being able to forgive oneself.

Sometimes as I lie down, thinking of how far I have came, how many people I have hurt, I am overwhelmed with a sense of guilt. This guilt however, has a negative ripple effect. It creates skeptical and highly suspicious friendships, without trust and security, it also creates the inability to accept and forgive other people's flaws. Why, because of my lack of inner peace, I look at the world through a damaged lens.

The first step in forgiveness is accepting the forgiveness. In the parable of the unforgiving servant [Matthew 18:23-35], it is not that the Master had retracted his forgiveness; rather it shows what a lack of acceptance of the forgiveness can do. If the 'unforgiving' servant had truly accepted the forgiveness from the Master, he would have readily exercised it on the other servant who owed him a smaller sum. But, because he did not, he could not.

Forgiveness does not restore a relationship (not just yet, at least), it does not build back trust (not instantly, maybe) but it frees a caged conscience. It loosens up many a man and a woman from the guilt of their mistakes.

Much as the Bible has a plethora of texts on how God forgives, they mean nothing to us unless and until we accept the forgiveness and live no more under the shackles of the past offences.

And that is the lesson am still grappling with; to learn to forgive myself, because it is only then that I can exercise the same grace on others.

There is something about good gifts, you just want to share them with others!

So, you ask, what happened to that man? Well, I don't know. That part is left up to each of us to fill in, but so you know, that man is in all of us.