I have always prided myself on being good at forgiving, but what I never thought about until recently is what it really means to forgive. Forgiveness is about mercy. It is about accepting the pain one has caused you without bitterness, anger, or resentment, without wishing them pain. When I thought I was forgiving, it was not forgiveness at all but forgetting. See, over the years not only have very few people done anything to hurt me, but I also developed a very high threshold for what I would allow to hurt me. I couldn’t accept that I had been hurt. It seemed easier to brush it off and move on rather than recognize the pain someone had caused me.
To recognize the pain was to admit that I had made myself vulnerable. So instead of accepting that I had been hurt and choosing forgiveness, I acted like it wasn’t a big deal. But this didn’t help me, because when I was hurt in big ways, the gravity of which I could not deny, I didn’t know how to forgive. And not knowing how to mean the words “I forgive you” doesn’t hurt the person who hurt me; it only hurts me. I am the one who is weighed down by my bitterness and resentment. It is my memories that are coloured by my lack of forgiveness. It is my future interactions and relationships that are affected by my inability to forgive.
When I was in high school, a doctor said something inconsiderate that really hurt me. Instead of forgiving him, I carried my anger for years, until only a couple months ago, when I realized my anger was only hurting me. This doctor had no idea I was harbouring such resentments, but I was held captive by my pain. My anger at this doctor has caused me to not go to the doctor when I really needed to; it’s caused me to have anxiety attacks just thinking about going to the doctor; it’s put my family and friends in a difficult position when they had to urge me to see a doctor. Sure, there are other things at play in this situation, but after finally choosing to forgive him, I see now how my anger affected me, how my inability to admit that this doctor hurt me prevented me from living a healthy life. And I don’t want that for my life, so I’m pushing myself to learn how to forgive.
An author I adore, Shauna Niequist, said it better than I could ever articulate it: “When I’m trying to forgive someone, I picture myself physically lifting that person off a big hook, like in a cartoon… I realized that I had to take her off the hook every single time, not just one big time… And I still have to keep letting her off, every day, sometimes several times a day. Not for her sake, but for mine, because I want off the hook. It’s hard work, and I don’t want to do it, but I keep doing it. I keep letting her off the hook, because when I do, I can breathe again.”
I used to think that forgiveness was a one-time thing, that if I forgive them once then it’ll be over, but I’m learning that that’s not the case. When I think about forgiveness as being a one-time thing it diminishes my feelings, because it puts me in the mindset of “I’ve forgiven this person, so I shouldn’t be feeling this way.” But it is completely unreasonable for me to expect myself to turn off these feelings of hurt and anger after one moment. When I think of forgiveness as a continual process, it gives me permission to feel all the feels but still choose forgiveness, choose love, choose to let go, choose to breathe, choose freedom.
I’m learning to be more gentle with myself, to embrace my vulnerability as a strength not a weakness. I’m learning how to allow myself to feel hurt while not dwelling in it. I’m learning to see the true beauty of forgiveness over the superficiality of forgetting. And it’s freeing me to be the woman God created me to be. I hope it can for you too.