Saturday, May 10, 2014

"Home:" A Story of Forgiveness

Suddenly, in the middle of attending a concert, my mind was barraged with dozens of memories. The dark auditorium, the many people standing around me, even some of the loud rock music, faded away as I went somewhere, and somewhen, else. I was experiencing it all over again:  the nervousness while telling her how I felt about her, our first kiss, her extremely frequent laughter (It was a unique laugh, an acquired taste for me but a sound that I came to love.), trips to Princeton for awesome chicken parm sandwiches on Nassau Street, and countless other great moments that we shared in the short six months we were together.

But I had to brace myself for what I knew would come next. The positive memories became darker, eclipsed by the mistakes I made in the last few months of our relationship. I felt again the guilt, the emotional numbness, the overwhelming regret as I discovered that there are some things that can't be undone. I remembered the times she cried, and the look of helplessness in her eyes because of the pain and confusion I had caused. For several years after I graduated from the College of New Jersey, I replayed these scenes over and over, partly to punish myself and partly in a futile attempt to figure out how things had gone so wrong. Eventually, I realized how little good that was doing and made my best effort to forget them. But now, the memories had come flooding back, and they were every bit as vivid as they were seven years ago.

It was the closest I've come to time travel. Instead of a DeLorean, though, it was the smell of her perfume that brought me back that night. Psychologists and brain researchers have long known that the sense of smell can trigger memories more strongly than any other sense. The physiological reason for this is that the olfactory nerve is located next to two areas of the brain associated with the making and retaining of memories:  the hippocampus and the amygdala, which is also part of the brain that registers how we experience emotion. Because it was so dark (and I thought it'd be weird to start randomly sniffing people), it was hard to tell where the smell was coming from. What I do know is that it remained for the duration of one song that the band The Dear Hunter was performing.

The smell of Steph's perfume forced me to relive both the good and the bad of our relationship. Set alongside the hopeful lyrics and music of the performance of "Home," though, the memories soon created a sensation other than the usual remorse and regret. I believe they became an instrument for carrying a simple message:  You are forgiven. Before that night, I had known this on a superficial level. It had taken years, but I had come to terms with how Steph and I ended and had decided to get on with my life. I knew that God was loving and figured that He had forgiven me. As convinced as I was of these ideas, they were realities in my head only. Part of me had continued to withhold true forgiveness from myself, hoping that in this way I could continue to be punished, if only a little. Part of me was afraid to let all of that regret go, as if to do so would mean hurting Steph all over again by forgetting about her. But I didn't have to forget, only to forgive. God had done this years before in His own heart, and had looked on sadly while I stubbornly refused to forgive what I had done, and rejected the offer of peace and comfort that He so badly wanted me to accept. That night at the concert, I was finally able to put it all behind me, and to know that it was okay to do so. 

When the song "Home" ended, the smell disappeared as suddenly as it had come. What remained was hope, and the conviction that life doesn't consist of a series of injuries we inflict on or receive from other people. At the root of life is love. No matter the size of our guilt or pain, life is bigger. Life offers forgiveness and the assurance that all is not lost. The only thing we have to do is accept the gift, and try to keep it at the center of our minds and our hearts.

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