Tough Decisions

I, for the most part, am a peaceful person. I'm a huge advocate of peace, kindness, acceptance...blah, blah, blah..... I do believe for fighting for what I believe in and for underdogs, but still, I am peaceful in nature. Or atleast I thought I was. God has been telling me otherwise. You know how he just sort of sneaks messages to you. Usually through other people. He has all sorts of creative ways of really getting to you. His message to me for the past couple of weeks has been forgivness.
I turn on the radio and it's the Ramones telling me to "Swallow My Pride" or Simon & Garfunkel singing about "Old Friends". You read a post by a dear friend on Facebook and it's all about letting go of petty arguments. Another person posts that you just have to love people anyway. Regardless of what they have done to you.
OK God!!!! I get it.
Francesco Petrarch said, "Five great enemies to peace inhabit with us: avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride. If those enemies were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.". Forgiveness is about letting go of your anger and sometimes swallowing your pride. It's about loving another human, faults and all.
I'm going rafting tomorrow. I have already started visualizing that every time I put the oar into the water, I'm going to let anger flow from me, through the oar and into the water. My anger will wash downstream where nature can take care of it as nature always can. I'm going to push resentment to the surface where the air can sweep it away. I will cry for things that weren't. For dreams lost and no one will know because my face will be red from the sun and the tears will look like spray from the river. I will finish the run exhausted, exhilerated, but at peace. And at the end, I will wrap myself in the laughter of my friends so that the anger cannot creep back to me. That's my goal. That is how I will get my peace back.
But if all else fails, Oscar Wilde said: "Always forgive your enemies-nothing annoys them so much." Yeah....I can annoy the hell out of people. I'm good at that.
AML