The last couple weeks have been some of the best of my life. I learned the beauty and unmeasurable strength of a very simple tool, forgiveness.
Before I go into what forgiveness is, I’d like to go into what it isn’t, and the lie I believed about forgiveness.
I used to think forgiveness was the same as forgetting, as if I were cancelling the wrong done to me. This is a very unhealthy understanding of forgiveness, as I found out. The problem with this method of forgiveness, is it’s basically a passive response to being hurt. By saying “I forgive them”, then letting the situation slide, I wasn’t dealing with the wound caused to me. The splinter was buried deep, and I let it fester.
The very valuable thing I learned about forgiveness is that it consists of two parts. The first part is calling out the wound and sin for what it was. “This specific thing this specific person did hurt me a lot. It was wrong. I felt very ____ when that specific thing happened. It’s not okay.” The most important part is to be in touch with the specific offense, call it for what it is, and identify how I was affected.
The next part, which is the forgiveness part, is simply to release judgement for the person that gave the wound/offense. This isn’t saying the offense is okay, because it’s not, but rather, letting go of judging and controlling that person in response to the offense. An example being, if after I got into a conflict with someone and hurtful things were said, I called that person an asshole and vowed to never speak to them again (even only in my mind). Even though I have reason to mark them for death, it’s setting me up for being stuck. Labeling the person and not the offense is never dealing with the hurt. Also, that person will remain, at least in your mind, in the time and place of that offense. No matter what they do, we’ll still see them and their actions through a filter, based on their previous response. Also, depending if we made a vow after judging that person, like “I’ll never be like my dad”, or “I’ll never trust men again”, we will ultimately see men in the same unhealthy way until that offense is defined, the judgement released, and the pain started to heal.
I’ve found often times how I judge and label people is based on unresolved hurts other people have dealt to me in the past. For example, it’s almost uncanny no matter how nice a women was to me, I’ve always viewed them as having ulterior motives. I’ve since been working through my unforgiveness of the hurts caused me by various women through my past which have pilled up. It’s been very freeing.
So what forgiveness is, in a sense, is moving the label from the person, to the offense. I’ve found that after I’ve done these two things, I can then see the person clearly, and often times then understand why they said what they did, or responded like they did. I can then learn about myself and them in the process, and learn how to communicate for next time.
It’s important to note that forgiveness isn’t reconciliation. It takes a lot of courage to talk to that person and start to build boundaries and trust again. Fortunately, I haven’t come across many people that don’t want to fix what’s broken and move into a new mature level of relationship that wasn’t there before. This is only possible after true forgiveness has happened.
It’s also important to note that forgiveness isn’t for the other person; it’s for you. Our forgiving someone doesn’t mean it will provide healing or resolve for the other person. We can ask for forgiveness for ourselves with repentant hearts wanting to be back in relationship, but ultimately, forgiveness is about me releasing my judgement. Unless we’re talking about forgiveness from God’s perspective, when in that case, it is for us. God doesn’t take offense.
This new tool/skill has been very instrumental to my freedom in the last couple weeks. I’ve found new parts of myself that have been stagnant, since they were basically stuck trying to resolve hurts and pain from my past. After digging out the thorn, I’ve started to heal. It’s been wonderful.
I hope this blog post can serve to help anyone struggling with being stuck. Forgiveness is the key to freedom. Jesus will help you do it, and show you freedom as a result, but unforgiveness can be a huge barrier keeping out people, and even God.
