Forgiveness

“It’s the hardest thing to give away and the last thing on your mind today. It always seems to go to those who don’t deserve. It’s the opposite of how you feel when the pain they caused is just too real. It takes all you have just to say the word…”

Those words have been stuck in my head for weeks. I can’t get them out, and I want them gone. As in, gone yesterday. A brief but startling encounter walking out the door of my house triggered the incessant replaying of the song. Having been fired earlier that week, eager barely began to describe my desire to flee the house and go out with my aunts for a day trip of shopping, but instead of getting on the road and gone, my mother stopped me to relay a direly important story. A former associate of mine had taken a job in the same building as my mother and had recently been let go from their position. That same week, a tragedy had set upon that person’s family and left the family basically in ruins.

“Sarah, I just want you to really think about giving money to a fund to help that person.”

I was stunned. Mortified beyond words. “Well, have a good day, Mother. I’ll talk to you later. Goodbye!” I walked out. I didn't even give her a chance to respond. I just couldn’t be in that room one more minute.

You see, that former associate was a person I loathed and avoided at all costs. During the time when we’d been friends, that person said and did things that violated me and my body. Outside forces did nothing to stop it or prevent it. I cut ties, left the relationship, and put as much distance as I could to protect myself from further harm, but that was it. It wasn’t until years later in RCIA did someone ever tell me, “You were wronged, you were powerless to help yourself, and no one sought justice for you.” I couldn’t have found better words to describe my situation. Finally, it seemed that I had found a place where someone truly cared about what had been done to me.

So it was a horrific surprise to hear them say, “That is a tremendous burden to forgive. How are you going to do that?”

If you’ve ever experienced pain like what I just described, you can imagine the volatile emotions and possible spew of R-rated verbal excrement I had in that moment.

Because let’s be real here – forgiveness. What is it? Well, a bit of Greek comes to mind. Aphiemi, used in Romans 4 to describe those whose sins God forgives, means “to send away.” It’s in the Lord’s prayer, “Send away our debts as we send away those of our debtors.” Various forms of the word appear in other places, like the parable of the Unmerciful Servant and Matthew 6:14, “For as you forgive others their sins, so also will the Heavenly Father forgive you.” The idea is that God dismisses our sins and literally sends them away from Himself. A person in a state of debt has a sense that the person to whom the debt is owed is in a state of power over them. The relationship is tense and more characterized by servitude and legalism than love and fellowship. Each time we seek forgiveness for our sins, God wipes our slate clean and restores us to a position of intimate fellowship with Him. It follows that we have to do that ourselves in our own lives.

So what does that look like in my instance?

A person violated me. What does forgiveness look like for that?

You know, I'm pretty sure there's no one right answer. For me, it was accepting that I could not get justice for what was done to me in this life. I had to learn to live peacefully with that. I had to learn to stop hoping for karma or some cosmic force to smack the other person and leave them sobbing on their butts. I had to learn that vengence and staying angry about it wasn't going to solve anything. Honestly, until that morning, I knew I had come a long way for someone in my shoes.

And then the waves of life crash in on the boat and the boat gets rocked.

Driving to my escape that morning, I relived that moment over and over again. Yes, this person was a debtor of mine, but I had worked so hard over the in-between years to move on and put the hurt behind me. My mother’s words ripped the wounds right open and made it hard to put the thoughts out of my mind. Give money to the person who violated me? After I’d just been fired myself?

What is a person supposed to do with that?This is the moment I am so glad that Christ came as a Human Being to earth and living a human life among us. He gets it. I know there’s a Person up in Heaven going, “Father, don’t smite her for how she feels. This is a lot. Be patient and have grace with her. Forgive her anyway.”

What does it mean to forgive?

It really does mean to let go of the hurt and restore relationships. For the latter, the best method of dealing with it was described to me by a wise friend back in high school: You’re hanging out in a doorway, and somebody comes along and slams the door on your fingers. After that, you really have three options. 1) Heal up, never be friends with that person again, and go on living your life the way you did before, 2) Heal up, be friends with that person again, go on living your life as you did before and get your fingers slammed in the door again, and 3) Heal up, be friends with that person again, and don’t leave your fingers in the door. Forgiveness a lot of times means being civil to a human being that has hurt you. We are called to forgive seventy times seven, after all. That doesn’t mean you put yourself in a position to be hurt by them again. Sometimes it means learning a lesson about things you should do – I mean, really, we all learned to get our fingers out of doors eventually. Sometimes, it means you don’t rebuild or reopen the relationship, but you also don’t seek retribution, either.

Seeking retribution isn’t seeking justice. If someone murdered a loved one or you were physically violated yourself – by all means, call the cops, go to the authorities, get help, press charges, do whatever you need to do. I’m not saying I don’t condone that. No. Please. DO IT. What I am saying is to not take matters into your own hands and purposefully try make them suffer for what they did to you. Listening to my mother talk about the things my former associate had happen to them, I struggled inside with the idea that it was possibly some cosmic force coming into play, “You cost this girl peace of mind and innocence and dignity; now yours is gone.” Maybe this was my justice! Eventually, by the end of the car ride, I knew it wasn’t. People might deserve that much awful happening in their lives, but we shouldn’t wish it on them, and we shouldn’t delight in it happening. I can honestly say that it gave me no pleasure thinking about the pain and grief in that person’s family that day. It still doesn’t give my joy at all. I am actually sorry that these things happened to them.

So, what does a person do in my situation?

Shopping and walking with my aunts that day, I thought more about the situation while they sipped coffees and chatted. I thought about what truly bothered me about the situation that morning, and I realized that I had done the best I could do about the other aspect of forgiving: Letting go of the emotional hurt. I won’t sit there and say it was easy. Far from it. It was a long, painful process of dealing with flashbacks, insecurities, and grappling with rot someplace deep and dark in my heart. It’s not a fun process. It takes time.

“There are some wounds time cannot mend,” Frodo Baggins, at the end of “The Return of the King,” says of his wound received on Weathertop. Yes. All of the yes. Some wounds will leave scars. Some wounds never fully heal up. It’s not perfect, but that’s life. I’m not trying to say that perfect Christians won’t have scars. Actually, I believe the best Christians have the biggest scars in their lives.

It’s what we do once we have those scars that makes the difference.

I’m the first to admit I was very lucky with what I went through. There are girls who go through more traumatic things on a daily basis. My scars are not their scars. I can’t speak for them. I can’t speak for those of you who have gone through more horrific things, or for those of you whose wounds are so fresh every moment hurts. For me, though, I finally did reach a place where it didn’t hurt anymore. I struggled with a fear of being physically close to people for a long time. I struggled with fears of working with strangers in the service industry. I struggled with trusting friends and coworkers. It took years, but eventually I got to the place where I could smile again, be open with people again, and feel free. I began sleeping better. I felt happier. The pain of what happened to me was gone.

It will happen for you, too, but you have to let it happen.

I have a scar from what happened to me. It will always be there. I won’t forget. But I can live my life in peace with what happened to me. I don’t let it get in the way of enjoying new things or moving on to bigger and brighter futures. For your sake, I hope you can learn to do this to. Maybe not today or tomorrow or next week, even. Heal, of course. But eventually, please don’t let the past stop you from enjoying the present and looking forward to an even more amazing future.

Forgiveness doesn’t happen in a moment. It’s a process, like everything else. There’s a reason we always say, “I forgive you,” instead of, “I have forgiven,” or “I forgave you,” right when something bad happens. It’s because we’re still forgiving that person. We have to keep saying it because we’re continually going through it every day until we’re free. That freedom does happen, but it only happens if you’re ready and willing and able to start the process.

Driving home after the wonderful day with my aunts (whom I did discuss my situation with, and they helped me think through a lot of this stuff – gotta give ‘em credit!!!), I thought my situation through. I had stopped hurting over what happened with my debtor a long time ago. The slate could be truly wiped clean. I had no real relationship with my debtor anymore. For a real friend in my debtor’s situation, I would’ve moved heaven and earth, started my own charity fund, anything. But for someone I didn’t know, after I’d been fired? A little cash would do.

I went home and handed my mother a crisp bill leftover from my shopping spree with my aunts. It wasn’t much, maybe half a tank of gas or a couple of meals at best. Maybe I could’ve done more. Maybe I’m not as gracious and forgiving as I would like to think. I didn't give much, after all. But it was given from a heart that understood that scars were not prison bars, fingers don’t belong in doorways, and clean slates are more precious than gold. I think that’s what counts the most here.