Life, The Root and Total Forgiveness

I've recently found a new TV favorite.
When I say favorite I mean, just knocked out the first season and got caught up on season two in three days. This show has quickly found a little home in my...well, in my life.

Life.

The show is about a detective named, Charlie Crews, who served twelve years of a life sentence for a triple homicide he did not commit. During that time, Charlie lost everything he had - his wife, his friends, and his fellow cops. Detective Crews, returns to the force, he brings his prison knowledge with him. He now knows the law from both sides, as cop and con. He also understands that his version of Zen applies to being a cop. Charlie believes everything is connected - victims, bystanders, witnesses, even his new partner, Dani Reese, who has a wall at which Charlie insists on picking away, not only out of curiosity, but also because it's fun. Regardless, she is his partner, and Charlie will back her up one hundred percent. But the badge and the new found wealth (somewhere around fifty million dollars) can't change what Charlie has been through. His world is a different one than the rest of us see, because his world lacks social pretense. And although there is darkness in Charlie's story, darkness in Charlie's job, Charlie will never stop trying to find the light.

Finding the light.

I've been slowly digesting a book, Total Forgiveness by R.T.Kendall. I say slowly because when you've been wronged and hurt, reading a book like this is much like picking at a scab that is trying to heal. But as I was reading the other day, I came across something that wants to take root in my life, in all of our lives, when we've been wronged.

Bitterness.

In the show Life there are plenty of people who still don't trust Charlie Crews and think he's out for revenge. The fact that he has somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty million dollars makes it all that much more suspicious.
In one of the shows he's asked by the chief, "why are you here? Why don't you just take your settlement money and go somewhere away from all of this?"
Crews responds, "Because I'm a good cop. Don't you need good cops?"

It's been quite amazing to see this detective have all the opportunities to take vengeance, but time and time again he does what's right. He really is a good cop.
Bitterness seems to have no root in his life.

Bitterness will manifest itself in many ways----losing your temper, high blood pressure, irritability, sleeplessness, obsession with getting even, depression, isolation, a constant negative perspective and generally feeling unwell.
The absence of bitterness allows the Holy Spirit to be Himself in us. This means that I will become like Jesus when I allow the Holy Spirit to have His way in me instead of acting like I want to when I've been hurt.
I can honestly say after months of working through the issue, I've been able to let go of the situation and forgive. The root of bitterness has shriveled up.
Bitterness is gone when there is no desire to get even or punish the ones who did us wrong.

Life in prison is what bitterness sentences us to when we don't forgive.
Life is what we get back when we don't allow bitterness to take root in us.