When people use to tell me “you need to forgive,” I thought it meant to dismiss what they did and resume the relationship as if nothing had ever happened. Time, experience and exposing myself to reinjury has taught me different.
Since a family member shared his struggle with forgiving what he deemed unforgiveable, forgiveness has been on my mind a lot. Just yesterday, I texted him this message:
You’ve got to forgive him. Every time the anger and hurt is left unchecked, the stronger it gets and more it eats away at your soul. He didn’t do what he did because he doesn’t love you. (I don’t doubt that if were in a burning building, he’d give his life to save us.) He did it because of what he believes about himself and what gives him worth. That’s what happens when anger and pain goes unchecked. So yes, hate what he did…but forgive him. That’s the only way you will grow into a better you rather than a better him. You don’t want that and what he did is not worth the hardness required to compensate emotionally.
This was hard to write to him because I truly understood the gravity of the injury. I walked with him through it and had to wrestle with my own feelings about the hurt he was enduring at someone else’s selfishness.
I wasn’t writing to him what someone else told me, but what I had discovered from the anals of my own wrestlings. You think you are making the other person pay. And to some extent, if they really care for you, you are hurting them. But more than that, every time the bitterness comes up in your mouth and you swallow it back down and justify doing it, it takes over more and more. Sadly, we don’t even see how it has affected us until we look back in retrospect.
When reading the story of the woman from Minnesota, Mary Johnson, I saw that she was engulfed in pain and hatred for her son’s murderer for over a decade. To me this is the sentence we serve when we allow our hurt and pain to take residence. Honestly, I don’t know how it can’t. Grief takes on many forms, one being anger. Sometimes anger is the only thing that gives us any kind of energy to keep moving. Sometimes it is a gift. When I have felt offended, it’s been the anger that’s enabled me to get out of bed and to seek justice or, in some cases, answers.
So, how do you do it? How do you forgive when your trust has been eroded and the pain is so hard to bear that you cannot function unless you do something with it? I think that if you were to bring everyone who has forgiven someone into a room and ask them how they forgave, they made some common discoveries.
You can’t stay in a state of anger – not destructive anger. At some point, something bigger than yourself kicks in. This, I think, is the first discovery. There has to be an awakening from some wise part of yourself that knows that you can’t go on like this. Maybe you start seeing the toll anger is taking on your relationships, your family, your job, your experience of life. Maybe you start seeing what you are losing. Maybe you start realizing that anger is not going to bring the person back or make your life okay again. Maybe you realize that if you are going to have a life, you gotta do something to reclaim it. I believe this is what led Ms. Johnson to go to the prison to see Oshea. I think it was in many ways an intervention – not for Oshea, but for herself.
To some and possibly even to me, going to visit him and forgiving him would have been more than enough. So what would motivate this woman to continue to go to the prison to visit Oshea? I dunno what her reasons were; but I believe that forgiveness has to be protected. When you first forgive, your heart is open and vulnerable. You have to stand guard over it and not put it in harm's way. And too, you have to replace the anger and hatred with something positive. Perhaps, her visits with Oshea filled her with truth about the path her son took that put him in harm’s way. Clearly, her son was on the path to become an Oshea. So perhaps the second, or another discovery on the path to forgiveness is finding meaning.
I’ve not experienced loss to the extent that Ms. Johnson has. I don’t know what it’s like to look a murderer in the eye and say, “I forgive you.” What I have come to recognize is that bitterness is like having a hole in your heart. As a result, you can’t hold anything. You can’t hold love. You can’t hold kindness. You can’t hold goodness. No matter who gives it to you, it is met with fear or suspicion. And if anyone does anything nice, the satisfaction it brings is short-lived. You have to patch that hole. That’s what forgiveness is. It’s finding the patch for that hole inside of you and no longer requiring someone to do it for you.
Plugging the leak is what allows your heart to hold what comes its way. You receive love and you hold it. You receive kindness and you retain it. You start seeing the you that has been held captive and offer him clemency. You take the other person off the hook and you take yourself off the hook for what happened.
Now some may find that love by getting filled with the Holy Spirit in a charismatic church meeting. Others may experience the infilling of love as they bring home their newborn baby from the hospital. Still others may find their soul’s rescue while in service or volunteering to help others. Regardless of how it presents itself, the desire to be better and to live more honorably will bring you the help you need. I’ve never prayed for help and God didn’t hear me. And as long as I know He hears, then I know that His grace is sufficient to take me through all the peaks and valleys and get me to my ultimate recovery.
How long does it take? Forgiveness can take place in an instant or it can take most of your life. I believe it's completely up to you. Right now, if you open your heart, you can be free.
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