Full Moon over Arizona--and Forgetting about Resentment

Darkness was falling one evening this week, and I was restless. I was struggling over many things--the raw food I was supposed to be eating and how it was not agreeing with my stomach, the subcutaneous injections I had to give to myself every day, and how now I had to put sodium ascorbate into a quart of water and sip throughout the day--so even my water tasted bad. That was the last straw after a very full day, and that evening I broke down for just a little bit. 

 (Later Jonathan would suggest I add stevia or flavoring to my water, an easy fix to that awful taste, but I couldn't think of how to tweak things. And we would talk to both doctors and kitchen staff about adjusting the food being made for me so that my stomach could tolerate it. But on this particular evening, I was struggling over something else.

Resentment. 

It wasn't resentment itself eating at me; it was all the times I've read, heard, and just recently been reminded of the fact that sometimes cancer can be related to resentment. 

Someone told us about women whose breast cancer healed after giving up their resentment especially against their mothers. There was a lady with breast cancer whose one side healed of cancer after she gave up her resentment against her mother; but she wasn't able to lay aside her resentment against her mother-in-law. And the other side remained unhealed.

This was the story we heard very recently. 

Many other stories follow this path, too. When the resentment was laid aside, healing took place.

So was I resentful? 

Is that why I have breast cancer?

Is it against my mother? Or my mother-in-law?

Or what about someone else?  

I can think of some others I've resented in the past. 

But what about now?

All of us have had resentment, but we don't all hang onto our grudges. 

Some of us have chosen the freeing path of forgiveness and love. 

But what if there is some hidden thing there that caused this cancer?

If you don't have cancer, you can sort through these questions more easily, perhaps, but when a clinic and doctors are helping you search for root causes  and gently reminding you to make sure you are living with forgiveness and no resentments and negative thoughts, 

you think about some of these stories you have read or been told just in the last few days. 

And of course, I thought of some resentments. I even voiced about three of them in one sentence to Jonathan. 

Maybe the stresses from those things had caused my cancer.

Who knows?

Jonathan stood very silently behind me. 

(It was possible one or two or all three were about him.)

He was a prince and just stood there very silently while I splashed dish water and stuck things here and there on the counter, unable to concentrate on evening cleanup. 

 So--if I was resentful, what should I do with it? 

Write down the resentments specifically on a piece of paper to start with, so there wouldn't just be this general idea, and I could look at them and decide what to do? 

Hand them over to God? Go pray and ask God to show me any resentment?

All I knew to do was head out the back door onto the brick patio into the Arizona evening.

And of course in those moments I wasn't taking pictures, so these are other ones.

But there I stood, worrying about resentments, 

until I suddenly just noticed the distant purple mountains. 

The closer shrubbery, the incredible warmth in the air.

So warm to a lady who suffers with cold most of her life, even in the summer, because of the air conditioning in buildings.

 

Far in the distance, a jet was gliding in to land at the Phoenix airport. But I could not hear it. 

Around me all was silent and peaceful--and warm.

I forgot all about resentments.

All I could think about--if I was thinking at all, was the beauty and the peace and the warmth. 

It felt like ARMS.

I came back to reality when doves swooped nearby, when a quail family came scuttling out of the brush, and when I remembered I was probably supposed to be writing down my resentments. 

In fact, I did.

I got a purple notebook, and I found a blank page. And I started writing down things. 

Slowly, as the August twilight settled around me in the Arizona calm, I wrote thing after thing. 

Things I had resented, or that at least had hurt me in the past, and even in the more recent present.

But then, for pity's sake, it happened again. 

How can you concentrate on resentment when you see the tip of a full moon rising out there in the east, and the fountain is about to go off a mile away?

The beauty was beyond description, with no adequate way to share it in a photo.   

But we tried.
I got my hubby. "I wanted to be by myself," I admitted, "but you've just got to see this!"

We both stood for a long time, looking at the full moon rising and the fountain spraying. 

And then my prince slipped away. 

He had noticed I'd said I wanted to be alone. 

So he left me alone. 

My list of resentments is still unfinished.

I don't think I need to finish it.

It is going into the wastebasket without any further ado. 

Who needs to worry about resentments when you can throw crumbs to the ducks near the fountain, 

 and revel in Arizona desert beauty?

When in the uncertainty of cancer and the chill of stories you've heard, you suddenly feel unmistakable warmth,

the feeling of ARMS around you?

Who needs to dredge up past resentments when you can simply forget about them,

revel in the warmth of Everlasting Arms,

 and make new memories together?