#18: What has been the most difficult thing you have had to forgive?
Honestly, there’s no easy way to write this post. I haven’t been procrastinating because I can’t think of or decide on the most difficult thing I’ve had to forgive. I’ve been procrastinating because I know precisely what it is, and I’m not totally done the process of forgiveness.
Many people would say the process started about 3 years ago, but that’s not where I’m going to begin. It really only started when I was at Capernwray. The reason people would say it started 3 years ago is because that’s when it happened. I got hurt. Someone hurt me. Someone that I was really close to. In fact, I don’t think they’ll ever fully understand how they hurt me, but they did. Actually, I shouldn’t be pinning it all on them; we equally hurt each other, I believe. But that’s not the point. There’s no reason to divulge what the situation was, or who the situation involved, because that’s not the point either. The point is: we both screwed up, and we both ended up getting hurt somehow.
The reason I believe this process only started when I was at Capernwray was because that’s when it finally hit me how incredibly stupid I was being and how stubborn I was. Have you ever heard the quote “Unforgiveness is like you drinking the poison and expecting the other person to die”? That’s how I was being stupid. I was the one that drank the poison.
Anyway, at Capernwray, in March, we had a week of classes about love and relationships. One of those days, the people giving the lectures taught us all about forgiveness. Man, I had never heard forgiveness explained so clearly in my life! We as Christians are experts at forgiving people intellectually (as in, in our heads). And that’s what I did. I forgave with my mind, but I put up a barbed wire fence around my heart so that no one could get in to see that I had actually not forgiven. (And honestly, I think that that’s where a lot of my insecurities, fears, and trust issues arise from, but that’s a whole other dog-and-pony show.) I, for one, along with other Christians, suck at actually forgiving people in our hearts. And it makes sense. Forgiveness is hard.
When you think about it, it actually takes trust in that person in order to forgive them. You’re trusting that they won’t hurt you again, even if you know that they probably will.
Unforgiveness also puts us in a rather dangerous place. If that person’s asked for forgiveness from God, God has granted his forgiveness, but if we are still too stubborn to forgive them, that essentially means that we think our standards are higher than God’s. Do you seriously think your standards are higher than God’s? It also says in Matthew 6:14, 15: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
Chew on that for a couple minutes. Dangerous ground to be on.
Notice how I transitioned from talking about my unforgiveness to giving a lesson on unforgiveness? Let’s swing back. I’ve learned that in order to forgive someone, you need to give up two things: 1) the hope that the other person will understand the hurt and pain they put you through, and 2) the hope that the other person will one day pay for what they did.
I’m not gonna lie to you. I still hold onto those hopes sometimes. Instead of hoping in these two stupid things, I really need to put my hope in Jesus. I know that. I’ve been a Christian for a long time, and my hope is not in Jesus nearly as much as it should be. I haven’t arrived. I haven’t reached perfection. I’m terribly flawed. But at least I know I’m learning.
I’m gonna leave you with something that Paul said in my favourite book of the Bible:
“Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus made me his own. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:12-14)
