Forgiveness: A How To and a Why To

If you're having trouble forgiving someone, you know that your life keeps circling back to that person and their actions. You can't keep yourself from discussing it, from thinking of it, from using that period as the go-to excuse for failures that truly have nothing directly to do with that situation. How do I know this? I have been there, circling that same drain.

Not forgiving someone is a trap. It makes that moment in time, that person the center of your life. You never, ever move on. If you don't move on, you don't ever get away from it.

You are still right there in that Hell.

To Be Crass...

Don't let crap rule your life.
Deal with it and move on.

It's in your best interests to forgive. It doesn't mean that what happened was right or good or anything. It just means that you are ready to set that person free from your desire to personally witness justice. You'll let God deal with that situation and that person.

Forgiveness is an admission that you are not in control,

You aren't now and you weren't then,

And you're moving on because

There is only one thing

You can actually

Control:

You.

Forgiveness gets you out of the mess you were in. Finally. It gets you out mentally and emotionally. You get to finally be free.

Freedom! I highly recommend it.

So, here's the deal. If you find it hard to forgive, let me let you in on the Great Big Secret. Forgiveness is not a feeling. It's not a once and for all type of thing. It's a decision. You make it every time you are tempted to dwell on that person, that moment, that perfectly justifiable anger.

Here's how it works. You think of that person and you say, "Okay, that was bad, but I forgive it." Then you give yourself permission to think of something else. When your thoughts drift back you get to tell your thoughts, "Been there, done that. There's no more fruit here. I've forgiven."

It's that simple. It's a process. At first it's simply that: a mental action that you decide to make. After a period of time--days, weeks, months, years, or decades--you will find that this little mental ritual will not be necessary quite so often. If you had to struggle to think of anything else at first, then three times a day after a year or so is an improvement.

Here's the other thing. Some people with certain temperaments do have an easier time with this process. It's true. It's harder for you.

How do I know that? Because you're the type who reads this type of thing. You're like me: you need to learn people stuff. I've always needed Human Lessons. It's why I can write about it. Someone taught me or I went out and did what you're doing. I looked it up. There are those who seem born knowing this stuff. Not me. Not you either.

Life's complicated. People can wreck a person. It's tough going, for sure.

Just keep in mind that Christ told us we are to forgive someone 70 times 7 times. I'd always assumed that he meant to forgive someone every time they did something wrong. Now that I'm in the cycle of forgiveness I get it. He means sometimes you have to forgive a person that many times for just one bad moment. He's talking process here.

I hope you get it. Your life is worth the trouble it takes to forgive. In fact, you will only get your life back once you forgive.

Moment by blessed moment.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is many things, but there is one thing it is not. Forgiveness is not an emotion. It is not a feeling. It is not something you intuit or experience. It is not something that happens to you, unless you happen to be on the receiving end of it.

Forgiveness is a struggle. It is a choice. It is a decision. It is a moment by moment redirection of the will away from the directions your emotions want to drag you. It is a gift that seems to be given to the recipient, but forgiveness is ultimately a gift you give yourself.

Forgiveness is freedom.

I won't tell you how or where and I certainly can't say why, but I have lived under the tyranny of a sociopath. For many years I was simply a bug on a pin. Just so you know my credentials to speak to you of forgiveness, know that I have stared down the barrel of a gun so many times that I finally stopped reacting. I have had my bedroom door chopped down with an axe, which satisfied him enough to second guess his intentions. I have been spat upon, used as a Kleenex, degraded in more ways than I care to share.

I spent several years on antidepressants as I came to grips with post traumatic stress. I have graced varieties of therapy couches, spewing this poison from my soul. Finally I trained as a rape and domestic violence counselor in order to look others in the eye and hold out the hope that healing is possible.

I know a few things about forgiveness.

Those of us who have to create a normal life out of chaos make tons of mistakes and do our own damage as we flail around. Healing hurts, too, and I have done my share of hurt. I have been forgiven much. We all have. Being forgiven is sometimes difficult, but mostly it's a gift we are expecting and accept easily. All the trouble comes in on the other end, when we have to lay aside the power and the glory of our anger and be the forgiver.

I have forgiven in all the ways it is possible to forgive:

I have forgiven the contrite
                        the oblivious
                        the indifferent

I have forgiven the dangerous.

That's the hardest one. Forgiving the one who, if given the spark of a chance, would consume you once again in brutish human Hellfire. 

I have managed it, finally, that distant and wary forgiveness. It's secretive, this forgiveness, smallish and weak. It is the most heroic thing I'll ever manage, other than surviving sane. This is why I'm fine now, why I am not still beset by nightmares, random terrors, ashen pockets of guilt and shame that I would walk into like a foul fog. Forgiveness is why I can breathe a deep breath when this particular shelf of my memory is knocked accidentally and down tumbles a few horrors of the past.

All the snakes in this box are dead. I stopped feeding them the day I started starving my anger, the day I decided I would start to stop suffering the self-inflicted wounds.

The choice not to forgive meant reliving each horrible moment every moment. That's the key. I no longer had any gun pointed at my head, but in trying to make him sorry by continually reliving it, I was the one holding that gun. It was me who kept it eternally pointed at me. In not forgiving, I kept myself locked, eternally, in that little Hell we had, locked up with him forever. He was the greatest force in my life.

I had to let it go, do you see? Can you fathom what I mean? Out of the depths I call to you, reader. Can you hear me, because I can hear you. "How?" you say, "How in the world?"

I don't know how. I just decided to. 

Without his explanations and apologies, with no promise that it would never happen again, indeed knowing it would in an instant if I did not keep my distance, and long after any statutes of limitations ran out, I decided to forgive.

I did it like this: I said, "I have no idea what forgiveness is, but I want it, Lord. Let me forgive."

I still don't know much more than that. I just know that now, when that old visitor comes knocking, I can say, "This is done. I forgive." 

The verb is active, present, infinite.

It is beyond human scope, really. It is a gift. It is something else. Yielding it, my dragons are slain, the fire is quenched. Dante surfaces. Beatrice breathes.

Forgiveness is a key to a door. With it, you can unlock your mind from its terrors and step into your freedom. Only outside of your Hell can you search out the key to your heart.

But that's another story...

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Forgiveness is tonight's topic on the Garden of Holiness at Deeper Truth Podcast

Listen here at 7:00 p.m. Eastern/6:00 Central

The gift of remorse

February is Autism Awareness Month so you'll be seeing a lot more posts about working with and around it at our house. I'm jumping the gun by posting this, but I was too happy to wait.

Monday, my 6 year old son showed remorse. It was the first unmistakable, undeniable, and unself-centered sign of remorse ever. He had broken his brother's beloved pop gun. With his brother crying in the background, I showed my Autistic son the broken pieces of the toy and said, "You broke this pop gun. John is crying because you broke his pop gun." He'd been smiling nervously, responding to the tension of the moment, but then his face changed. Tears welled up and his eyes darted to the room his brother was in. He touched the pop gun and then looked away. I seized the moment, drinking in the fact that here and now he was sorry. "Simon, you can fix this. Go hug John to say sorry."

My son John was surprised by both the tears in Simon's eyes and the hug. He stopped crying instantly. He's well versed in Autism and knows that the self-centeredness of his brother is not intentional, even if it can be hard to live with at times. Even though his all-time-favorite toy of the moment was gone, in moments he was smiling and proud of his brother being sorry for it. Of course it helped that I promised to replace the toy the first chance I got. The problem wasn't as large, the hurt wasn't as powerful now that Simon had showed he suffered over it, too.

Autism always gets me thinking. Forgiveness does not require remorse on the part of the forgiven, but it sure does help. When the wrong doer doesn't take up his own cross of remorse, we have to bear it with the thought that the person who should be sorry isn't. That makes the hurt a little bigger, sometimes a whole lot bigger.

I know that this is obvious. I know that you already know this, but some insights into ordinary things are bigger in real life. We get used to remorse in those who wrong us. We forget that it is a gift, that it is, in fact, optional. I am going to try to remember this the next time someone is sorry at me. I want to be thankful for it and not just expecting it.

Like my sons, I can learn.

Accept an apology like a gift...thankfully and politely

I have a confession to make

I haven't made this in six years...

About 15 years ago, a Jewish family introduced me to this bread and told me how to braid it. My first attempt met with their approval and so this beautiful bread has graced my table every Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas since before I was even married. Except the last six.

What happened was that six years ago I gave this bread as a Christmas gift to a person whose family refused to eat it because it was a Jewish bread, and she called to be sure I knew all about it. Understand that if my family was so odd as to reject Jewish bread on the day we were celebrating the birth of the most famous Jew of all, the person all Christians consider the Jewish Messiah, Christ Himself, I would have been silenced by the irony. Understand further that simple good manners would also have kept me mum. Also know that due to my weaknesses of character, I was equally outraged by both outrages. I don't know why bigotry did not trump rudeness in this instance, but apparently it didn't.

For six years it didn't. I did not even want to think about that phone call, so I didn't. Even to the point of not thinking about the bread. It was a forgiveness problem. If I had done the simplest examination of conscience shortly after hanging up the phone, my girls (six and under) would have memories of attempting to knead and braid this bread. They would have mastered the egg yolk painting of dough. My oldest girl, now six herself, would be ready to braid her own little loaf. They watched me, today, and they painted. This Easter, they will braid and mangle their own little loaves.

I must say that I am ready to forgive, now that I am aware that I hadn't. Challah once again graced our Christmas table. It was fun teaching my kids to get a nice spitty gutteral "chka" going. I don't feel very forgiving, but I have decided to forgive. I well know that forgiveness is more an act of the will than an emotion. My emotions may never quite catch up to me on this one, but if you ever read this and recognize yourself, you have been forgiven. We're good here.

I was almost Jewish before I was Catholic. I was also almost Mormon. If it hadn't been for God intervening, I don't know which I would have picked. Either way, traditions in all three have a soft spot in my heart and a place at my table.

This recipe and my humble awareness of my brand of silly is my gift to all of you...

Challah

Braided Bread

1 1/2 tsp yeast

1/2 cup warm water

2 cups scalding milk (almost boiling)

1/2 cup sugar

1 stick butter (1/2 cup)

2 tsp salt

1/2 cup water

5 eggs

11 cups flour

1 egg

Step 1: Combine yeast and warm water in large mixing bowl and set aside to proof.

Step 2: Scald milk, then add sugar, butter, salt, and 1/2 cup water in a medium bowl. Cool to 110 degrees (Warm to touch).

Step 3: In a small bowl, beat 5 eggs. Add to cooled milk mixture. If the yeast mixture has bubbles forming, add the milk mixture to the yeast mixture. (If the yeast has not bubbled, reproof another mixture of yeast and warm water). Add 2 cups of flour and beat until smooth. Add remaining flour until a stiff dough (not sticky) forms. Knead for 10 minutes. Lightly grease a large bowl and place the dough in it, turning to coat the bread evenly with the grease. Cover and let rise until doubled (about 1 hour).

Step 4: Punch dough, turn, cover and let rise again until doubled (about 30 minutes).

Step 5: Punch down again and divide in half. You will make two loaves. Take each half and divide into thirds (for a total of 6 pieces). Take three parts and roll them until they are about 15 inches long. Pinch the tops and braid the rolls on a large, greased cookie sheet. Tuck then ends under the loaf when finished braiding. Repeat for the other roll. Cover and let rise until doubled.

Step 6: Lightly beat the remaining egg and brush evenly over the loaves. Bake in a preheated oven at 350 degrees for 30 to 40 minutes. Bread is done with a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

If the bread is browning too fast, lightly tent with foil while cooking.

Merry Christmas!