Editor’s note: The following article refers to spiritual concepts. Please read Lovefraud’s statement on Spiritual Recovery.
Forgive, as a word, and as an ideal, is very misunderstood in our world. Not only is the idea misunderstood, but the word itself is often intensely disliked.
The act of Forgiveness does not release the perpetrator from responsibility for their crimes, nor condone the behavior. Forgiveness is about letting go, a process that releases us from another’s destructive hold over our lives. It is not about accepting, trusting, or increasing future suffering. To the contrary, Forgiveness is simply releasing pain from the past in order to end future suffering.
Ultimately, forgiveness is not about someone, or something else. The idea that we must forgive someone else is only a step in learning the real Truth about letting go. This step helps to teach us where the real suffering of unforgiveness is experienced”¦in us. It is ourselves that is released through forgiveness, and until we forgive, we are likely to repeat the past.
Forgiveness is how we let go of the resentment that is harming us, and I speak from experience. In fact, the only way to I know how to help others is by sharing my understanding through my experience. Personally, I receive very little benefit from people that offer advice and opinions from a perspective that does not include actual personal experience. All of the healing that I have experienced in my life has come from God, and those that have personal experience with overcoming difficulties through faith and forgiveness.
Most people have their own understanding of forgiveness based on where they are in life and this article is in no way meant to criticize another’s perspective. I do not ask others to do, or believe what I write. That is up to the reader.
I am not sure how to say what I need to say without sounding like I am taking credit for something that I had very little to with, but feel the need to use my own personal experience to show an example of what Forgiveness in action looks like.
It is God’s Grace, faith, and forgiveness that changed my perspective, and with it, my life from hell, to heaven.
My dad is a serial killer. He abused my mom, used me to help him destroy evidence so I would not go to police and has threatened to kill me. I know what evil looks like. I’ve been to hell.
I also know what unforgiveness looks like because I have experienced that as well. Unforgiveness looks a lot like hell to me. It causes physical and emotional illnesses, including migraine headaches, chronic back pain, nightmares, sleep apnea, drug addiction and many others”¦all of which I have personally experienced.
Holding on to resentment is like drinking poison, and hoping the other person dies. It is toxic both physically and mentally. This is a medical fact as well. Many studies have been done on what resentment (or unforgiveness) does to our bodies, including raising one’s blood pressure when simply discussing someone they have not forgiven.
Forgiveness is not a lack of responsibility or action. It does not mean that we are to be passive and perpetual victims. To the contrary. Forgiveness requires great courage, faith, and action.
Yes, forgiveness does require action and the results may surprise you”¦it did me. I thought forgiveness was for sissys, but I was wrong!
Next week, in part II, I will write about how forgiveness gave me the courage to face my fears, my father, break the cycle of abuse, right the wrongs of the past, and what it looks like in action.
Great Article, travis and I think you and I think alike on this aspect.
I use the story of Joseph (of the coat of many colors) in the old Testament as an example of forgiveness.
Joseph was the “golden child” favorite son, his 10 older brothers were from a wife their father did not love, so Joseph was given a coat of many colors which was rare. The older brothers were sent to work in the fields with the sheep and Joseph mostly lounged around the camp. Joseph was also a very self-centered youth and had dreams where his older brothers were subservient to him and told these dreams to his brothers. The brothers came to resent joseph so much that they actually planned to kill him. They caught him and put him into a pit to keep him there until they got around to killing him.
One of the older brothers was going to secretly release him, but he had an errand to run and when he came back the pit was empty.
While the good brother was gone a caravan of traders came through and the 9 brothers decided to sell Joseph as a slave and they took his coat and smeared it with blood and took it home to their father to make him think Joseph had been eaten by a lion. Their father grieved for decades with a grief that knew no boounds.
In the meantime, Joseph had a hard time in Egypt as a slave, though he was a good slave, he was thrown into prison for several years and while he was there, he “GREW UP” as it were and realized that he had to let go of the anger he felt toward his brothers for putting him in this situation. HE FORGAVE THEM.
Fast forward a decade or two and through various ways, he is now except for the king, RULER of the country. During a famine, his brothers come there to buy grain, and HE RECOGNIZES THEM but they don’t recognize him. Since he speaks through an interpreter they don’t know he understands their language.
Joseph has forgiven his brothers, but HE DOES NOT TRUST THEM, so he decides to TEST THEM to see what kind of men they have become in the meantime. So he puts “stolen” merchandise in their sacks of grain and then sends soldiers out to search them, and Low and behold, there is theh “stolen” silver….so as a consequence he makes one brother stay in prison until the others go back and bring the “baby brother” Benjamin back to Egypt to prove to Joseph that they are not “lying.”
Well, they eventually bring Benjamin back but then the “stolen” gold is put in HIS sack, so when the soldiers search Benjamin (his only full brother) is taken to be the slave for robbery
Now, what will these older brothers do? What kind of men have they become in the decades since they sold Joseph into slavery, sending their elderly father to his grave thinking joseph is dead, now with Benjamin a Salve the old man will surely die of his grief. The brothers step up—they offer to replace Benjamin as slaves if Joseph willl allow Benjamin to go free and return home to their father.
Joseph at that time embraces them as his brothers because he can see that his TEST proved they had changed, they had grown a conscience and they would put their father’s needs and Benjamin’s welfare above their own.
It was ONLY after the TESTS when Joseph saw ACTION that these men had changed that he reestablished a relationship with them. But he had FORGIVEN THEM, gotten the bitterness at them out of his heart, many years before. He had let go of that bitterness.
Reading that story again with NEW EYES I realized that my egg donor’s DEMAND that I “forgive” by PRETENDING IT DIDN’T HAPPEN AND WOULDN’T HAPPEN AGAIN” was NOT what the Bible taught. Forgiveness and trust are NOT the same thing, and forgiving does NOT mean I have to restore trust with someone.
Thank you for this article, Travis…I realize that “forgiveness” is an emotionally charged word for some people…it was for me until I saw the REAL meaning of the word. I have also found that carrying around a load of bitterness rubs off on my spirit.
To forgive a spath is to give him another thought. That is what he wants: your attention. As long as he has your attention you are enabling him.
The only correct response to a spath is to dismiss him from your life.
I agree this is a wonderful article….
Until I let go and forgave, understanding what forgiveness meant, I wasn’t able to move away from the bitterness and anger…
Even with some of the therapy moves…like re-enacting the situation and demonstrating how and what you would say if given a change to do it again…..or writing out how I felt and then ripping it up or tossing it into a ceremonial fire….etc….none of it worked….
Forgiveness did….letting go of the resentment….letting go of what I felt inside…my burden…..
And thanks Oxy for the story of Joseph….I know it well but I loved how you teach us about the difference between trust and forgiveness….AMEN….
Hi Sky,
Do you think that to dismiss the spath from our lives is to forgive? Because until I let go of the resentment, or forgave, I thought of him. After the forgiving, I don’t think of him…I didn’t verbally tell him this as he would have laughed at me…..it was personal to me….
I think it is harder to try to dismiss them at least for me….I am the type that needs to forgive I guess in order to feel peace….
I know of a woman who constantly puts up sayings about men that are losers on her FB….is shows she is still thinking of her sp 4 years later…..wow….I am so glad to move on…
Vision,
that’s a good question. It seems like forgiveness has so many meanings now that it’s hard to use the word and know what it will convey to others. That’s why I prefer just to use the dictionary for it’s meaning
On the other hand, the word we are looking at is not forgive, but forgiveness which implies the state of being that WE feel when we have forgiven. Can we enter that state without wiping the slate of obligation clean? Can we feel forgiveness without actually forgiving a debt? In other words can we feel forgiveness and still hold the spath responsible for his debt?
It gets even more complicated. Are we forgiving the spath or his actions? Or both?
Spaths want nothing more than to rent space in our heads. Well actually, they do want something more, they want to turn us into them. And spaths always keep a score board as to who owes what to whom. They keep tabs. It’s what gives the game meaning – and life is a game to them.
For me, the only way to deal with a spath is to opt out of the game. Just say no to spath games and keeping score.
Yet, I don’t want to absolve them from their debts because that is enabling them.
So, I guess for me, letting go of resentment is to acknowledge that they owe a great debt for their actions but I let the universe collect that debt because I’ve walked away from the game the spath wants to play.
Forgiveness is much too personal a thing. It requires my involvement, my thoughts toward the spath, and a continued relationship (the forgiver and the forgiven) even if there is no contact, the relationship is circumscribed in the process of being the forgiver.
Walking away and going on to better things is what I want.
Sky,
Very thoughtfully put….it is personal….I get what you are saying….I suppose letting go of resentment but knowing that they will pay according to the Law of The Universe…moving on…as long as NC applies….all sounds like “forgiveness” in the sense of the word….to me that is….
To others, it means involvement etc….thoughts….
I “forgive” by not pardoning the sp or his actions, but my own feelings about it, my resentment, not even thinking about him or his actions. Some might not call that forgiveness but more of a letting go…hmmmm
As long as we can move on and even the thought of them, doesn’t effect us one way or another…we heal…
I think of my sp because my daughter tells me about their conversations etc. I can without feelings listen to her…I don’t feel anymore pain etc so I feel good….wiser….like an old wizardly woman….ha ha…..(not that old) but inside….
Vision,
that’s a good model for letting go. when we become wiser, we grow up and move on. Spaths never grow up and they never move on.
Amen to that, Sky! Thanks…
That’s another series of posts worth flagging for future reference, Vision and Sky. Thank you. Athena
The word “forgive” can be such a loaded word.