I went for a walk and along the walk, not for the first time this year, I saw this beautiful yellow flower. It was growing in a pack, there must have been 20 of these luminescent-yellow flowers bunched up together.

I googled it. It’s called Ranunculus ficaria or better known as “Fig Buttercup,” “Pilewort” or my personal favorite, “Dusky Maiden.”

Over the last 2 weeks since I first saw it, I was excited that maybe it was a sweet reminder, whispering that spring is on the way. This has been a hard, dark winter and these first blossoms of spring excited something in me. I had something to look forward to: warmer weather, longer days and the blooming of the whole hemisphere.

On a recent walk I came up on a couple hunched over these flowers taking pictures of them. They looked like they knew what they were doing, what they were looking at. I paused beside them and asked, “Excuse me, I’ve been wondering all week what those beautiful flowers are. Do you know what to call them?” The man, without missing a beat, forcefully replied with a sly smirk, “they are invasive.”

They didn’t know the name, but they knew they were out of place here in North Carolina. They are, in fact, native to parts of Europe and Asia. They should not be here. They bloom earlier than most native plants and by peaking its flowers first, they choke out the native species. They win the race for good soil, sun and water. They aren’t supposed to be here.

That is how I am feeling about forgiveness these days, but maybe not like you think. There are people and places in my life where I need to forgive someone or some situation that has happened. But holding onto my sense of right-ness or even (to use a scary Christian word) righteousness feels so much better. Holding my high ground, my perspective that I am “right” and someone else is “wrong” feels delicious. I don’t know where, but I swear I once heard Nadia Bolz-Weber say, “shame is like eating a candy bar for dinner. It tastes delicious but has no nutritional value and you’re hungry again in 30 minutes.”

That’s how holding onto unforgiveness feels for me right now. Forgiveness, the harder thing to do, would bring me back to level ground with everyone else. It would restore the sense that we are all in this together when I would rather be able to shake my head in disappointment at all “those” people who are less right than I am. Because I never have and never will need grace. Right….

But that darn invasive species, that first spring-sprout of color, that “not supposed to be here” weed is shooting up into every crack of sunlight in my life. Forgiveness. I just can’t help it. I’m choosing, I’m relenting to, I’m giving up my bitterness for grace.

Don’t get me wrong, I often do this horribly. There are some days I wake up and feel that overwhelming bloom of mercy all over. But many mornings, this morning, I feel the desire to clench my fists and wrap my grip as tight as I can around being right. When I get into these moments (or days!) of feeling “holier-than-thou,” I need a change of perspective. I need that invasive species to take over and remind me that grace, love, hope, mercy, kindness, compassion are all the better way. The harder way, at least at first, but the only true way.

Years ago I posted a prayer from Steve Garnaas-Holmes on this blog. Here is part of what he prayed:

Stuff happens. Germs happen. Earthquakes happen.
Evil happens. People who hurt do awful things.
You know, don’t you, God does do something about that.
God has sent you to heal, to do justice.

But who do you think God is anyway? Some guy?
God is not a person. God is Love.
Not just a loving person, but Love Itself.
The Divine Energy, the Heart of All Things,
not some guy at a control panel.
Love manipulates nothing but changes everything.
Love is the gravity, the light, the Oneness,
the air in which everything unfolds.
Even loss. Even evil.
Your very anger at God is God, loving, longing.

When you look and can’t find God
you’re looking for a guy.
Stop. Look for Love.
Love isn’t “somewhere.” Love is,
weeping, singing, pouring forth in the darkness.
Let even your rage be love.
Let go of complaining about the darkness,
and let the light pour.

Steve Garnaas-Holmes, “Angry At God,” https://unfoldinglight.net/2018/10/09/zraates8aze8c8tppyx3mzb5sxbar4/

I’m going to try and choose love again today – to embrace forgiveness that sprouts in every place we let the light in. I will do this so imperfectly, but praise God for you who choose to love that invasive species too. You who hunch over a spring bloom and feel the call to forgive, even when shaming someone else might temporarily feel better.

I need your grace and your love. I need you who see the sun shining and choose to believe that forgiveness is the only way. I need you who see a weed and praise God for the beauty. I need you and I am so, so grateful for you.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Pixie Lighthouse. They allude to the fact that with forgiving comes accepting. There may be real harms that were done to you or that you did to someone else. We may really suffer, experience loss and pain. That will change us. It might be hard. And don’t believe the religious yuckety-yucks for a second who spout the B.S. that “God is just teaching you something right now.” Maybe you will learn something, but pain is hard. Full stop. That’s the sentence. Life can be hard.

And what I believe is also true is that eventually, you will be alright. Eventually, the change will be OK. Maybe the change is even a blessing. Maybe the invasive species, forgiveness, that can feel so out of place, maybe this is God’s gift too.

Your wounds are hard at work making their sacred medicine in the hidden spaces below the scars. With loss, there may be nothing satisfying for you to reclaim. If a special person has died, or love went away, what we yearn for most is an impossible return. The sacred task at hand is to let yourself be reclaimed by something deeper than the immediacy of struggle and pain. This something need not be identified or fixated upon, but surrendered to.

Pixie Lighthorse, The Wound Makes the Medicine: Remediations for Transforming Heartache (Irvine, CA: Row House Publishing, 2023), 13.

Grace & Peace, Cole