I forgive you…

I forgive you…

Those three words are probably the hardest three words that will ever come out of your mouth.  This subject came up the other day when I was talking with a girlfriend.  She asked me to pray for her to find forgiveness in her heart.  At first, I was like, “absolutely, I will do that for you”.  Then, I started really thinking about my own struggle with forgiveness.  She asked for some tips… if I had any in that department.  How was I going to give her advice when I can remember the days that I did not know how to do this very well and suffered greatly because of it?  Forgiveness takes spiritual searching and time, from what I’ve learned.  I am not a master at this at all and would greatly appreciate as much commentary as possible.

Through all the grief, turmoil and strife, I would push all those negative emotions back in a dark corner of my brain, to sit there and brew.  I would hardly speak of them and acted as if nothing ever happened.  Year after year of suppressing the pain, my brain got a little clogged up, as you can imagine.  This is when the pity party started.  In my depression, I  started really thinking about why I was so angry or bitter.  I soon began to realize, I had a past that needed to be dealt with.  I needed to learn how to forgive ex friends, ex boyfriends and myself.

Prayer

I, first, had to forgive myself…this one was very tough.  I hold guilt like you can’t believe. I really started believing that I deserved to be treated a certain way by friends because of the way I acted or treated others in my younger years.  I believed with my whole heart that I was never going to be good enough to have a decent man because it seemed I always picked the wrong one.  I believed that I was never going to be good enough for my parents because I decided that school wasn’t for me and I didn’t have some fancy degree.  These are just a few examples but, why in the world would someone want to carry that weight around?  Well, much later, I learned that these were all lies from the pit of hell.  When I handed my burdens to God, He helped me become strong enough to fight the devil inside me.  Instead of always feeling like I was owed something, I started asking for forgiveness.  This wasn’t just some hocus pocus magic trick, and BAM, I was healed.  It took a lot of time and patience.

Patience was something I had never embraced before.  I was more of the, instant gratification, type gal.  Which is weird, ‘cause I have the patience to teach and love it, but I don’t give “life” the same respect.  I had that, it’s-now-or-never attitude.  I would fall head-over-heels in love with a goober because I didn’t have the patience to really date and get to know someone.  I didn’t like the dating scene, so I would get seriously involved with the first guy that showed any interest…bad idea. When I was able to find patience, I forgave myself.  The next time a man took interest in me, he was a man after my heart…my husband.

With this new found patience, I started writing a list of why I was holding on to so much guilt.  It took months before I really started getting down to the root of the problem.  Once I found the problem(s), I prayed and told myself to…

“Free yourself of these issues.  They no longer can consume you.  You are a changed woman with morals, intelligence and value.  From this day forward, you will treat others the way you want to be treated, even if you get NOTHING in return.  You will choose to love and learn to forgive.  God, is your friend and will help you, all you have to do is ask”.

I do have to remind myself of this “come to Jesus” talk from time to time and that’s ok.  Forgiving yourself is one of the most liberating feelings in the world.  Being free to love wholly literally changes everything.

There may be a few of you who don’t think you have done anything wrong, but being trapped in this angry body, has left you spent.  Forgiving yourself or even asking for forgiveness is just plain ridiculous in your eyes.  You may think that everyone is out to get you and you don’t deserve to be the tortured little soul you are.  PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER!  This was me, way back when.  So, I know what it’s like to hide.  Unfortunately, you can’t hide from yourself.  You are the only one who has to live with you every single moment.  You have made up plenty of excuses for why you are so tortured.  STOP PLAYING THE BLAME GAME!  Whew, ok… now that I have exploded on paper…I think you get my drift.  Asking for forgiveness or forgiving yourself is the first piece of the forgiveness puzzle.  I know it seems a bit self serving to “love” yourself but, in order for people to respect/love you, you have to respect/love yourself.  There is nothing sexier than a confident woman.

The second piece of the forgiveness puzzle is learning how to forgive those who hurt you.  In my experience, these three ways have helped me with forgiving others…

You may be able to muster up enough courage to do this face-to-face.  I have found that this is really not a scary task.  It can start out as small talk and then you can briefly apologize for saying the mean things you did when that person put you through the wringer.  I know that is a hard pill to swallow.  In my experience, it ends up with the other person apologizing and all of a sudden you feel ten pounds lighter.

face-to-face

You are still pretty hurt and for whatever reason you like to hold on to the pain and guilt.  You may think that if you ever saw that person, you might stab them or do something even more unpleasant.  My advice is to write a letter to this person.  Tell them how much you dislike them, how disgusted you are with them, and all the ways they hurt you.  Then at the end of the letter, forgive them.  If you have to fake it the first few times that’s ok.  Fold the letter up and put it away.  Read it everyday and change things if you need to.  Then, when you feel like the letter is perfected, either give it to them or burn it.

Writing is powerful...so is burning :0)

You know you can’t face this person.  You can’t even focus enough to write a letter.  You do know that you must let the pain go.  So through prayer you can, in your heart, forgive someone.  The tricky part about this is, you have to, by all means, really let it go.  You can’t just say that you forgive them, then continue to trudge through the muddy path over and over again.  You have to let it go for the sake of yourself, friends and family.

Forgive in your heart

The third and final piece of the forgiveness puzzle is, time.  I know that being an American, we tend to have the attention span of a gnat.  So, we expect relationships to come and go as quickly as materialistic things do.  We find medicine that drowns the immediate pain, rather than dealing with it head on.  So, when we do enter the next friendship or romantically involved relationship, we drop our bags inside the front door for our friends/partners to sort through.  Is that fair?

How many times have you been in a relationship and either you or your partner continually express hurt feelings about something or someone from the past?  How does that make you feel?  How does that make your partner feel, if you’re the one expressing the feelings?  What good does that do for your relationship?  What I’m trying to get at is, you should not bring your baggage into a new relationship and expect the other person to simply understand.  I know that a relationship is two messy people trying to work it all out but, if you are constantly wallowing around in the midsts of your past, it is going to be, nine times out of ten, destructive.  Most of us are very co-dependent so we rush right into another relationship to fill that void.  You have to stop doing that.

Time = Healing.  Healing = Forgiveness

Time heals

Everyday, I search for forgiveness in myself and in others.  Everyday, I get stronger.  Everyday, I become a better me.

Forgiveness is a place of peace.  Life is way too short to live in constant grief.  I know there are so many other situations that I didn’t mention here.  Some situations will definitely be easier to get over than others.  You just have to take the steps to start the process.  From what I’ve learned, no one can do that for you.  I wish you all the luck with learning how to forgive.  I would really love to hear some of your stories and the process that helped you.