Of course, I hope my children learn to forgive those who hurt them. But, more importantly, I hope they understand what forgiveness means. I grew up thinking forgiveness was just a “forgive and forget” exercise. Yet, as I have gotten older, I have realized if I keep forgetting what I was forgiving, I keep getting in situations where I’d be hurt and have to employ the “forgive and forget” task again. If I did not “forgive and forget”, I would be eaten up with anger and bitterness. And that’s not good.
Simon Wiesenthal, in his classic, The Sunflower, explores the topic of forgiveness in the wake of perhaps the most harrowing and gruesome of all crimes: The Holocaust. He tells a simple, but powerful story and then asks for responses from not only his readers, but some other folks. After reading this book, I was not only struck at the complexity of forgiveness, but also its power and its limitations.
I learned from this book that only certain people could be qualified to forgive certain crimes, that being the victims themselves. I also learned that forgiveness was possible, but not as easy as I thought.
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Second, is that, by the grace of God, I try to find a place to forgive, to understand, to refrain from paying back evil for evil. It is hard, but wonderfully powerful because I then become disentangled from the pain and begin to heal. T.D. Jakes in Let It Go writes:
What do you do when the persons who caused you the most pain have not and will not admit, acknowledge, or repent for their part in your pain? Simple answer, take the power back over your life and write it off. Demanding they make things right or have the quality of character to apologize also leaves them controlling the thermostat to a room you have to live in. (pg. 119)
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Also, the phrase in the Serenity Prayer about learning “to accept the things I cannot change” helps because there are some people who will never change, or apologize like Mr. Jakes talks about. So you have to "write it off." I am glad that forgiveness is divinely powerful, divinely preferable and divinely possible to all of us errant humans.
I will continue to try to forgive because I know unforgiveness is a deadly cancer to love. And love….well, that will be the next blog.
