Where The Worm Never Dies

The day after my mother’s funeral, Ginny, our four children, and I had to move from the house we’d rented for nine years.

Our landlord sold the house and our deadline to move fell the day after the funeral.

We did not have a place to move to.

Oh, we’d searched for a new house, but deal after deal fell through. We actually packed for two contingencies: one, if we found a different house to rent; the other, if we had to live in our car.

Yes, things were that bad for us.

We really faced having to abandon all our household goods and live in the car.

How we got a house to rent for the next ten years through the help of U.S. Congressman Charles Bennett is another story, but the things I’m thinking about this morning are regret, remorse and forgiveness.

These topics cropped up in conversation yesterday when my friend Wes took me out for breakfast.

We each talked about things in our lives which we regret. To regret is to mourn the loss of something precious to you. Although Wes is much younger than I, we are both men who have suffered loss.

Our losses make us the men we are today.

We concluded that following Christ has proved costly for us, and that to this day we regret some of the things we gave up thinking that God wanted us to—Whether He did or not is another matter, but it seemed so at the time; although now I suspect that we, or at least I, gave up stuff in misdirected zeal that had little to do with devotion to Christ.

Wes teases me for being overly pious saying I have higher standards for myself than God does.

When I speak of stuff we gave up, I’m referring to good wholesome things which we chose to bypass in favor of some perceived future good.

I think you’d call that being pious snots.

However, the losses we regret give us an appreciation for the skills and talents of other people. For instance, when I was younger I aspired to become an archaeologist, a passion I deliberately set aside, I regret loosing that vision but having once had it makes me appreciate what people in that field of studies are doing today.

When Jesus spoke of taking up a cross daily and following Him, I wonder if on a shallow level, our regrets are our daily crosses.

Maybe it’s just me, but in my own mind I confuse and mingle regret (mourning the loss of something precious to you) with remorse (a gnawing distress arising from a sense of guilt for past wrongs).

Not only do I regret loosing something, but I also wallow in self recrimination feeling that it’s my own damn fault for having lost it.

Double whammy there.

Gnawing Distress and I are old friends.

I always wonder what I should have done different.

Jesus spoke sorrowfully of a place of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, “Where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched”.

At my age I no longer have enough teeth left to gnash, so I’m home free in that regard, but the worm part I know all too well.

With my conversation with Wes fresh in my mind, last night as Ginny and I entered a restaurant after a library trip, across the parking lot, I saw a woman I thought I knew.

On second glance I realized it was not her.

But I cringed and my heart had dropped anyhow.

Which brings me back to the events around Mama’s death and funeral.

My father was an only child. He only had one cousin.

Mama had slews of brothers and sisters and a huge extended family who all remained close often visiting and eating together and holding crowded family reunions.

All these people gathered at Mama’s house before and after the funeral.

As they caught up on family news, they boasted about what good jobs they had, and their new cars, and prosperity, and influence with companies where they worked, and rental properties they owned, and that sort of thing.

Being desperate to find a place for my family to move to, I buttonholed each one individually asking for help finding a job with their companies.

Every single one refused me.

I spoke about renting one of their houses—I had the cash—and was told that they would not rent to me because “HUD people are too dirty”.

After the funeral party broke up, everybody went to their own homes and I went to see my friend Congressman Bennett who, in twenty minutes, used his influence to locate a home for my family. We moved in the next day and lived there for the next ten years.

For years and years and years after Mama’s funeral, not a single person from Mama’s extended family visited, or phoned or even mailed us a Christmas card.

I felt that during a time of trouble all these people had left us to die beside the road.

Not one person from that close extended family contacted us in any way.

I wrestled with a certain amount of bitterness.

Actually a lot of bitterness.

Back when Mama was alive and any one of these people were in trouble, they often called on me to change a tire in the middle of the night, or mow their grass or bring in groceries or lend them money or help move furniture or visit the jail.

I always went and did what I could for them.

Then—nothing.

I imagined they were afraid I might ask for money or something although I never even once had before.

Well, Ginny and I fended for ourselves. We established our home and raised our children and lived our lives with no help or even a word from the extended family.

Then, a few years ago, one of them called wanting to reestablish contact.

How was I to react?

After years of silence, he wanted whatever-the-hell-he-wanted.

Closeness?

Family ties?

He expected to be welcomed with open arms.

I treated him with cold courtesy.

That was the best I could do.

I am not a warm person in any circumstance, but I treated him with the same courtesy I’d treat any other stranger.

In my prayers I had forgiven these people for deserting us and leaving us to die beside the road. I wish them every one well but I do not wish to get involved with them socially. If one of them called on me, I would help to the best of my ability. But, I would remain stand-offish and regard them with deep suspicion, expecting to be hurt again.

I don’t intend to let that happen.

I’ve wondered about forgiveness. When I forgive someone, does that mean I still have to associate with the bastard?

Does forgiving someone mean you have to feel warm fuzzys toward them?

I do pray for them occasionally; “Lord, bless them and keep them—Keep them far away from me”!

I know. I know.

“Forgive me my trespasses as I forgive those who trespass against me”.

Easier to say than do.

So in the years since Mama died, I’ve not tried to establish any contact with relatives. I’m not sure I could handle it.

I did go to the funeral of one of them—but only because I needed to talk with a rapist I knew would be there.

I wanted to talk with him about forgiveness.

It was my duty.

So I did it.

But, the worm never dies.

So, what am I to do with my thoughts about regret, remorse and forgiveness?

When Jesus took me on, He got a whole can of worms in the bargain.

Don’t know for sure, but I imagine He gets that mix with everybody.

One word of comfort comes to my mind, the words of the Apostle John, who was known as the apostle of love:

“If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things… And this is His commandment, that we should believe on the name of His son Jesus Christ, and love one another ”.

Yes. That’s the ticket…

If our heart condemn us…

Worms are for fishing.