Got Misery?

     Frank, a character in the movie The Light Between Oceans captured me even though he plays a minor role. Frank’s community bullies him, then rejects him because he’s ethnically different. He refuses to bear a grudge and remains remarkably happy because he calculates the price of withholding forgiveness and isn’t willing to pay it. “You only have to forgive once,” Frank says. “To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. All the time. You have to keep remembering the bad things.” He pauses and smiles. “It’s too much work.”
     I get what he’s talking about. I’ve clung to affronts much smaller than Frank endured. I’ve let them fill my mind. Turn my stomach sour. Make me miserable.
     Which I why I was thrilled when a reader of my new novel “The Wooden Indian Resurrection” wrote that the book got him thinking about forgiving former friends for how they hurt him, and of forgiving himself for bad choices he’d made. Maybe my hard-earned lessons are seeping out in this fictional story of a deeply wounded person. Maybe others won’t have to chew on bitter fruit as I have.
     If “The Wooden Indian Resurrection” impacts you, would you let me know? It’s available on Amazon in both paperback and ebook.