The "Go" of Reconciliation

I have only experienced this sort of reconciliation once. I was on the receiving end. My pastor came to my husband and me at the tail end of Sunday school. We had been teaching the three year olds of whom we had two and he had one.

A bit of background: A year before we had been the best of friends -- the pastor, his wife, my husband, me and our four young children. We got together on the spur of the moment -- combining pot-luck style what our frugal budgets could afford, caring for each other's children, sharing plants from each other's gardens, meeting over coffee and dreaming about the future. Then we -- my husband and I -- had gone into business with my pastor's in-laws, and while the business was a stunning success, the partnership was a disaster. My husband and I had suffered what seemed like a death, and now, an ocean of pain lay between our pastor and us.

That particular morning, he was going to be serving communion, and as he said it, he wanted to do as Scripture taught and be reconciled -- if he had done something to offend us. If. If. Hm-m-m. What a powerful little word. We were pretty young at the time, and I've never been good on the spur of the point, but I wish I had had the presence of mind to protest. To say this mess -- for indeed it was one huge mess of mistakes (big and small on both sides), hurt feelings, misunderstanding, and betrayal -- could not be resolved in the five minutes before he needed to be upstairs for worship. But I didn't. My husband didn't. We were taken by surprise. We had no idea how to begin to put the damage into a conversation, let alone a five-minute, neat-and-tidy reconciliation. No, the script for this conversation had been pre-written, and we played our part, said our lines.

Months later, before we left town and moved halfway across the country to start a new life, I sought out a mediator and invited this pastor and his wife to what I imagined might be a real reconciliation -- not neat and tidy at all but by its very messiness imbued with genuine meaning. They declined.

And to this day, honestly, I wonder how it's really supposed to work.