ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

by

Christine Phillips

December 19, 2011

Take a very sharp knife and slice your hand open with it. Then pour salt -- or better yet, acid -- into the wound. It hurts, doesn’t it? I mean, it really hurts. It makes you want to cry and scream with agony. The pain will subside. The wound will heal as time passes. That is, unless someone who doesn’t want you to forget the pain comes along and rips the scab off, tears the wound open, and pours more acid on it. Then you’ll have to go through the healing process all over again. But what if you have to go through it repeatedly for several years?

We took advantage of the loyalty, love, and friendship of others, and made them our allies. We burdened them with our grievances. Yes, as Christians we are to bear one another’s burdens. But we are not supposed to involve others in problems that don’t have anything to do with them. That makes them feel like they have to take sides. We made them take up our offenses. In so doing, we caused them pain. We were wrong to do that to them.

We have learned from our mistakes. We’ve apologized for every wrong, real or imagined. We’ve tried to make amends. It’s time to apply a healing balm to the wounds and bind them up, and let them heal. The scars that remain are sufficient evidence of the pain we’ve caused each other and will (hopefully) keep us from repeating the same mistakes. It does no good to relive the past. We will not speak of it again. We have to let our hearts, our wounds, heal. It’s time to move on. Enough is enough.