South Bend

As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

—Psalm 103:12

One cloudy Sunday some years ago, Aaron and I went to South Bend. I had a TV interview there on Monday morning, but the most important thing that happened there had nothing to do with the interview.

Aaron and I struck an important agreement. We decided to leave a tangled-up mess of six months of you-did, you-should-have, you-said right there in South Bend. We had been injuring one another for months, in the name of honest discussion, beating the same dead horses to dust. We were deeply tired of fighting the same fight so many times, of apologizing for the same things, accusing one another of the same things. From then on, we were free to fight about anything we wanted, but not if it was something we left in South Bend, because it could not be resurrected. There had to be a statute of limitations.

If God removes our sin as far as the East is from the West, then for Aaron and me to leave our offenses in South Bend was a good start. The absence of all the things we left there created space for new things, good things, new patterns to be built, new moments of warmth and connectedness.