With the world in so much commotion, the questions and thoughts written by Brittney C back in November 2007 are worth revisiting.

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Bear with me, friends. This is my maiden voyage into the blogosphere, and I’m liable to make any number of blogging faux pas and breaches of etiquette. I apologize up front. First on the list: my grandmother. Gramma, I apologize that I’m fixin’ to talk politics in public. Please know that your son is a wonderful father. This post is no fault of his.

And reader, if I’ve sunk my boat by the end of this thing, forgive me. Treat me with kid gloves, I beg.

But I’m working on an epiphany here. A small one, to be sure.Still, it’s coming to me in pieces, so I’m asking for your help. See, it started a few weeks ago in Relief Society (I say a few weeks. It was probably more like months. I forget. Anyway…), during a fourth Sunday lesson. You might know it as Teaching for Our Times. The lesson came from Elder Faust’s April 2007 Conference talk titled, “The Healing Power of Forgiveness,” (one of my favorite talks of our time), and the sister instructing opened the lesson the same way Elder Faust opens his talk–by relating the tragic story of the Amish schoolhouse shooting in Pennsylvania last year. His focus, of course, was the immediate forgiveness the Amish community extended to the family of the addled man who perpetrated the crime. Elder Faust says this:

“One local resident very eloquently summed up the aftermath of this tragedy when he said, ‘We were all speaking the same language, and not just English, but a language of caring, a language of community, [and] a language of service. And, yes, a language of forgiveness.’2It was an amazing outpouring of their complete faith in the Lord’s teachings in the Sermon on the Mount: “Do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.”3

I loved the talk, the lesson, and though I am uncomfortably, enormously pregnant, I even loved sitting through relief society that day. But the epiphany was only just beginning. It was still a tiny pink bud.

It happens that I live in a tiny town in the fairly remote, fairly rural northwest, and in our town, right off the main drag, is a house you can’t miss. It’s a modest house–a little rambler, painted light blue–but it’s decorated to the hilt in yellow ribbons and flagged stripped bows. They’ve hung ribbons from every tree in their yard. I wonder about the subtext each time I pass the house. Maybe they had a son stationed in Basra. Maybe he isn’t coming home. And there are two signs framed in the front window. One reads “We Support Our Troops.” The other says simply, “9/11 NEVER FORGET.”

It also happens that I’m a particularly forgetful human being. I blame it on a head butt with a windshield, once, in a pretty nasty crash. After 7 years of marriage, my husband understands that I won’t remember where I’ve put the car keys, that if our daughter has a doctor’s appointment we dang well better write it down. It’s nothing I would wish on you, especially if you’re a pregnant woman and forget the consequences of drinking even a fluid ounce of water before you go to bed (you thought you had a small bladder before? Huh). Most days I wish I could remember anything. But I’m not sure about that sign. We passed it on our way home from church that day, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

I know forgive and forget are not synonyms. I know that repenting does not beget forgetting, and, most times, I think that’s good. But I’m wondering how to apply Elder Faust’s talk, in essence, the gospel of Jesus Christ to real life? To politics, to be specific. Maybe even more specifically, to war. Elder Faust says, “This shocking violence caused great anguish among the Amish but no anger. There was hurt but no hate. Their forgiveness was immediate.” BUT, he also has this to say: “Of course, society needs to be protected from hardened criminals, because mercy cannot rob justice.” I understand and entirely agree. Still, I’d like to understand better the situation we’re in as a country. Is forgiveness too simpleminded? Part of me thinks perhaps it’s naive. The other part thinks, “how could it possibly be?” The Savior has commanded it, but in the context of geopolitics how does it work? As a country whose safety is ultimately predicated upon our righteousness, how do we emulate Christ in the face of frightening aggression? How do we speak the language of forgiveness? How do we forget the hurt?

I’m sorry if this post is a little heavy, a too deep shade of grey. But it’s one I care deeply about as a woman, a mother, and a follower of Jesus Christ. So, could someone PLEASE help me flesh out this epiphany? On this snowy day in northern Idaho, I’m still craddling a bud.