I was offended and I knew it. And most likely, if I told my story to you, you would tell me I had every right to be. Every time I thought of them and the situation, I remembered how much we enjoyed being with them, yet I reasoned within. I told myself we didn’t need them in our life anymore. Maybe it was one of those “for a season” relationships and never was meant to be long term. We just needed to move on. Yet whenever thoughts of them stole into my heart again, a certain part of me wanted to forget the instance, forgive, and go on as if it never happened. But it didn’t work that way. The hurt was too deep.

Then one day I was out walking. Our county usually did a pretty good job of keeping up our gravel road but they had become too lazy during the heat of the summer and had just brought their trucks in to dump gravel over the whole road, not smoothing it out. For days I tried to walk on that loose gravel. My feet would slip, my ankles would turn, and I just couldn’t find sure footing. It took all the joy out of walking.

Days turned into weeks and although it slowly became better, I still struggled to walk. One morning while halfway through my walk, the gravel caught me unawares and I stumbled. My ankle turned hard enough that my sandal slid to the side and my bare heel landed smack on a chunk of gravel. I felt the sharp pain of it. 

“Ahh!” My breathy cry was half pain and half frustration. Why, oh why, couldn’t the county just grade our roads for once? Did they even realize what trouble they were causing? I wanted to be bitter at our county officials. It was then the thought stole quietly into my heart. “You’ve been dealing with this gravel road for weeks now and it’s still hurting you just like this offense you want to carry in your heart.” 

I didn’t want to hear that thought. Didn’t want to let it invade my heart. Couldn’t I just hold onto this offense? In the end it wouldn’t hurt anyone would it? I justified that they wouldn’t care anyway if we stayed away and we would move on to others and soon not even notice.

But later that day, my foot felt bruised as I cleaned my house in my bare feet. The spot on my heel, where that chunk of gravel had landed, reminded me of the rocky road. As I limped a little, I began to realize that even though my walk had been many hours before, I was still walking with a limp because of it. I still had pain in my foot. 

When offense touches our hearts, we may decide to just remove ourselves from the situation, but as long as we carry the offense, it’s like a bruise on our hearts and we will always limp a little. Weeks later we will still be stumbling. Our eyes will always grow a little dim when memory recalls and our hearts will always ache just a bit. 

It is true that the county came and just dumped gravel with no thought of how it would affect others. But when the road grader finally comes, he will smooth it all out and we can easily walk the same road again.

And that’s just how offense is, isn’t it? It may be true that what has been done to us is wrong. Forgiving offenses isn’t saying it’s okay what happened. It’s letting Jesus come in and grade the road of our hearts and make it smooth so that the offense need not come between us. He makes the rocky path smooth, we can walk the same road, and the gravel will not make us falter. He will make sure steps for our feet.