When talking about leaving a tough situation with a friend, this wise friend threw out the metaphor of leaving "firing shots over your shoulder" and how that's how some leave tough situations, trying to inflict pain on others as they leave. I really latched onto that picture of a cowboy riding away from a fight on a horse in the old West. At full gallop, the cowboy would look back and fire a couple of shots at the enemy as he left trying to pick off a bad guy or to do as much damage as he could. After thinking on that picture and had some thoughts about parallels that are flaws in the "shooting over the shoulder" strategy in leaving a tough situation.
One, shooting over the shoulder isn't very accurate, especially speeding away on a horse, so they never hit what they intended to hit. They don't really ever damage any of their targets. When you leave, those shots never make it back to those that hurt you, so they are usually completely oblivious to your gunshots...or one might get through out of nowhere and then everyone around wonders why in the world you'd be so cruel to do that, because those innocent bystanders in close proximity have no knowledge of the situation.
Two, because they have no accuracy, they usually cause damage that they never intended. The only possible people who get "hit" by things are those people that those fleeing on horseback have a relationship with that have deal with them. Think about it...you don't hang out with the folks that hurt you, you hang out with the folks that love you. Whether a new relationship or an old one (pre-dating their hurt), friends are forced to relive the pain with the rider time after time. It might be a relationship from the place of pain that didn't have a part in the hurt, but constantly feels the need to either apologize or exist in a vat of hard feelings against others because they are have to interact with them. It could be the rider's spouse or children or just good friends..they take a bullet(s)...either way, you end up really just shooting your own team.
Three, they never really truly leave the situation. Getting farther and farther away, as they lose perspective on things, the details of what happened gets distorted and out of focus. Their attention is focused on something they can't control and they waste their time with things they can't/wouldn't/won't fix. The facts just get worse, like a caught fish just gets bigger each time you tell the "story", and they just stay one step away from the situation and the hurt.
In keeping their focus on what's behind, they are not able to deal adequately with the present. It's like they ride away believing a rope is tethered to them and to the situation and to them, trapping them to that moment in time. At any second, they are prepared to teleport themselves back to that moment in time, any time someone will listen to them re-tell the injustice. They blame those in that place or those from that situation for never letting them leave, but, if they were to step back and examine the two ends of the "rope" carefully...they'd find one end in that situation just laying on the ground and the other end, not tied to them, but just grasped in their clenched fist.
Consequently, because they are ignoring the present, they also are unprepared for the future. They usually crash into and destroy something in their future because they were unprepared for it, because they spent too much of their life looking back. They never leave the past behind.
Ultimately, the greatest damage the rider ever does is to himself. This damage usually becomes something that they blame on the tough situation and people in their past that just "ruined" them. The truth is that it is their own toxicity that is eating them away from the inside. It will continue to eat away long after the memory of the past has faded into nothingness, because anything that remotely resembles the pain becomes their new nemesis, drawing their ire and judgment. Truly, the most dangerous and unhealthy thing of the situation is something that they carried away inside themselves...the inability to be secure in who they are and move on to the future that Christ provides.
Want to know if this is you?
What's the big hurt in your past? Like the ol' "how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie pop" cartoon...how many comments does it take you to get full on mad about that situation/person?
Do you refer to it often?
Do people know where you are going very early in the conversation?
Does it drive your decisions now? Do you find yourself spending a lot of time building defenses to avoid getting in that situation again? (Nothing wrong with avoiding a bad situation, but are you obsessed with doing so?)
Do you see trails leading to a repeat of that situation often?
And a real situation arises like it...how fast do you get into full strike mode?
Word to those who wish to be wise in their life...don't be this person, that's not Christlike, and living this way accomplishes nothing. Drop the rope, leave it behind, forgive and set yourself free.
