Healing our Country from within: Kitiki #306

Bitterness is not on the Menu

“Healing begins when bitterness ends.” 2 Sam 14:24

I asked a colleague if he had anything that maybe he could contribute that might help the dystopian nightmare we seem to be approaching. “Unfortunately” he wrote back, he was going to a reunion where people he knew “went to the Baptist church in town. To say our families were close when I was a child is a mild understatement.” He’ll be seeing someone from one of the families who is “deeply religious and deeply MAGA….Trying to navigate that is gobbling up a lotta my bandwidth.”

I wrote back, “it’s about healing.” I know that’s a stretch. And if you have been reading me for a while now, you know what I think of reunions. But if I went?

A couple of questions need to be asked. The first question? What needs to be healed. The second? What is a bitterness we see around us? You can’t fix it if you can’t define it. Our country is torn right now with cancers that are metastasizing at alarming rates: immigration, tariffs, wealth. Viral lies with no vaccine in the doctor’s bag that’s destroying the very cornerstone of our country. Devastated as we wake up to tweets from someone who’s a legend in his own mind, who doesn’t seem to care about hearts breaking. Amid all this we ask is there something we can do? The answer? Yes!

Get up and don’t lie down today until you’ve done something. Done something to heal someone beginning with yourself! There are many things we can do. Look at families that don’t talk to each other. Look at co-workers who’s name we don’t even know. Look to Jesus and the things he actually said. Look at ourselves.

Often we look do something more complicated than the simple tasks: making a phone call or sending a text or even putting a comment rather than just like or emoji on someone’s Facebook post. Special emojis are okay. I know it doesn’t seem like much. But as I become more aware of the daily aches and pains of aging, I find myself more aware. Some tasks maybe a bit more difficult than they were yesterday, but I hope I can reach deep and bring some of the energy, faith, and some of the hope I once had. In the process, generate a feeling that heals.

Bitterness can consume you, overwhelm you like tsunami. It can make you somoen you’re not as we are continually savaged by negativity. In some scenarios the best effort to not get beat down is to allow ourselves to leave. It’s the best if we can’t do anything. But we are not defeated. We just regroup. We take control of the narrative.

One principal consistent narrative is America has always been an America where prejudice coexisted with people who love their neighbor people. America has been a place where people know the best way to treat a lie is to deconstruct it. America is where the more we realize the power we have, the greater our abilities to not allow ourselves to be consumed by people who think if they keep badgering us like children we will eventually give up.

I know it’s hard sometimes. You think it’s not even worth our breath. But to not do anything to heal ourselves or others only permits a lot of the sickness to get worse; the cancer to metastasize; or the virus to spread until the next reunion. When we do nothing, when we fail to add our part of the solution, the problem spreads. It’s not easy. If you don’t fight it, you get absorbed as a part of the problem.

I’m not good confronting people. Bullies with chants echoing they feel they are being replaced scare me. But I have a resolve to tell them they will not replace Americans. Rather than walk around with a bible in tow, carry the constitution. It’s a prescription for a better alternative to the bitterness we are facing. It gave us the right to free speech; the right to vote; and the desire to want to come here and be a part of the land of opportunity.

I had a long talk with a friend of mine today as the “quite part” was said out loud. She’s black and was told she hated white people. My friend was stunned. She’s a retired lieutenant colonel, about four-foot 11, and spent over 20 years having to demystify the fact she was an angry black woman because she was competent.

It took a moment to resonate, but as her bandwidth was being gobbled up, she finally responded, “No, you have no right to tell me who and who I do not like. You don’t know me,” and walked away. Truth always works. And as she and I talked, I told her bullies have attempted to corral me in a similar corner and I’ve responded, “It all depends.” Shocked as many are at that answer, they generally ask, “What? Depends on What?” They say it with a defiant smirk.

“It all depends on whether they are good or evil.” Then I walk away having made my point.

My point here, if we allow people to decide who we love, hate, or rally behind, we’re no longer in charge. It’s a recipe for a terrible meal. That’s how we stop the bitterness. It’s our table, we eliminate the bitterness on the menu and work on healing others.