Set Free: The Gift of Forgiveness

I used to think forgiveness was something you did for the other person. You know… the very Christian thing to do. Someone hurts you, you forgive, you move on. Cue inspirational music. Except real hurt doesn’t usually work like that.

Sometimes someone hurts you and you are ANGRY. Sometimes you cry until there genuinely cannot be another tear left in your body. Sometimes you scream, “Why me?” Sometimes you replay conversations in your head and think of all the things you should have said or would like to say. Preferably with God temporarily looking the other way. Just me?

During my first marriage, I think somewhere along the way I became bitter. I don’t know that it happened all at once. I think bitterness is sneaky like that. A hurt here, a disappointment there, something you swallow because you don’t want another fight, something you tell yourself you’re over when you’re clearly not. And, eventually, all those little hurts begin stacking themselves on top of one another. They get mixed in with disappointment and unfulfilled expectations until anger isn’t just something you feel anymore; it starts becoming part of who you are. That’s what scared me.

I remember looking at myself in the mirror and realizing I didn’t particularly like the person looking back at me. I didn’t want to be that type of person for my son. I was angry and it had changed me. In fact, I think some of that anger was ultimately what made me begin thinking about leaving my marriage. Whatever was happening between us was one thing, but what was happening inside me was another. And I didn’t want to become THAT woman.

Here’s the strange part. Probably six or seven years after our divorce, I saw my ex again and something was different. Nothing dramatic happened. There wasn’t some big movie moment where we embraced and the orchestra swelled. I was simply able to be in the same room with him without wanting to strangle him. I didn’t feel that familiar knot in my gut or the tears in my eyes. I remember realizing: maybe I’m healed from the pain, the disappointment, the abandonment, the deceptions… And maybe that’s when I finally understood forgiveness differently.

Forgiveness isn’t pretending something didn’t hurt and it isn’t rewriting history or saying what someone did was okay when it wasn’t. And it doesn’t necessarily mean putting someone back into the same position in your life where they can hurt you all over again. Forgiveness and reconciliation aren’t always the same thing.

Sometimes reconciliation is possible. Sometimes a boundary is wisdom. But forgiveness? Forgiveness is putting down something you were never meant to carry forever and WOW, can that thing get heavy!

Jesus talks about forgiveness A LOT which frankly is mildly inconvenient when someone has really hurt you to your core, messed up the plans and dreams you had for your life or broken apart your family.  It would be much easier if He had said: “Forgive the people who deserve it” or “Forgive once they understand exactly what they did to you” or my personal favourite: “Forgive when they finally apologize properly.” But He didn’t.

Colossians 3:13 says: “Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” There’s no little asterisk after that. Unless they were really awful.

And I think I understand why a little better now. Maybe forgiveness isn’t primarily about what the other person deserves. Maybe it’s about what God doesn’t want happening inside of us because hurt that isn’t dealt with has a funny way of reproducing itself.

There’s an old saying: “Hurt people hurt people,” and it really can become a vicious cycle of pain. When pain goes unresolved, we can end up carrying it into other relationships. Angry people tend to bring anger into rooms where the original offender isn’t even present. Bitterness can spill into a new marriage, a friendship, our children, our work, all because somebody from five or ten or twenty years ago is still occupies emotional real estate they aren’t even paying rent for. Think about that!

Even outside of faith, forgiveness is increasingly understood as something that can benefit the person doing the forgiving. Letting go of resentment has been associated with greater peace, healthier relationships and reduced stress. In other words, God may have known something. Imagine that!

But here is where I think Christians sometimes get forgiveness wrong. Forgiveness does NOT mean denial. You can forgive somebody and still acknowledge: That hurt me. That was wrong. That relationship is no longer healthy for me. I love you, but you cannot have the same access to me anymore. There may even be situations where the most loving thing you can do is forgive someone from very far away.

Forgiveness doesn’t require amnesia. It requires surrender. It’s saying: God, I am tired of carrying this. I am tired of rehearsing it. I am tired of letting what they did determine who I become. I am giving You the anger, the disappointment, the injustice and (this is the really difficult one) my desire for them to finally understand how badly they hurt me. You deal with them and I’m going to deal with me. And perhaps that is where the freedom begins.

I wish I could tell you I handled everything in my life that way. I have not. There were moments when I cried every tear in my body. There were moments when I absolutely asked God, “Why me?” There were moments when I wanted justice considerably more than I wanted mercy. Looking back, I wonder if forgiveness might actually be easier than carrying hurt. Definitely NOT easier in the moment, but over a lifetime? Maybe. Because resentment requires maintenance. You have to keep remembering, replaying, prosecuting the case... keep reminding yourself why you’re entitled to be angry. Forgiveness eventually says: Enough. Not because it didn’t matter but because it mattered enough that I refuse to let it change who I am.

I don’t know what someone has done to you and I would never casually tell another person to “just forgive.” Some wounds are deep. Some are traumatic. Some require counselling, boundaries, time and a whole lot of God. But I do know what anger did to me and I know how it felt years later to stand in the same room with the person who had once represented so much pain and discover that he no longer had that kind of power over me. There was nothing left to prove, nothing left to fight about… just peace.

Maybe that’s the real power of forgiveness. It doesn’t change what happened. It changes what happens next.

And perhaps one of the greatest gifts God gives us through forgiveness isn’t freedom for the person who hurt us. It’s freedom for us.

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Several books talk about forgiveness including: The Freedom and Power of Forgiveness by John MacArthur and Living Beyond Your Feelings: Controlling Emotions so they don’t control you by Joyce Meyer.

THE WORK OF FORGIVENESS

Books including The Freedom and Power of Forgiveness by John MacArthur and Living Beyond Your Feelings: Controlling Emotions So They Don’t Control You by Joyce Meyer explore forgiveness from a Christian perspective.

Psychology has also studied forgiveness extensively, with research suggesting that it can help loosen the hold that anger, resentment and past hurt have on our lives. But how do you actually get there?

TIPS FROM STEPHANIE ROURKE JACKSON, Life Coach & BE Relationship Editor

Forgiveness is rarely a single moment. It can be a process and sometimes one we have to choose more than once. Here are five practical places to start:

1. ACKNOWLEDGE WHAT HURT & UNDERSTAND THE EMOTIONS: Don’t minimize it or rush past it. Be honest about what happened, how it made you feel and how it may still be affecting you today. You can’t release something you haven’t acknowledged.

1. NOTICE WHERE THE HURT IS STILL SHOWING UP: Pay attention to your triggers. Are you replaying conversations? Carrying anger into other relationships? Reacting to something today because of something that happened years ago? Self-awareness can help you recognize where an old hurt may still have a hold on you.

1. MAKE THE DECISION TO LET GO: Forgiveness doesn’t necessarily begin with a feeling. Sometimes it begins with a decision: I don’t want to carry this anymore. When the anger or negative thoughts return, redirect them: Pray, journal, remind yourself of what is true. Ask God to help you release what you cannot seem to release on your own.

1. FORGIVE WITHOUT ABANDONING YOUR BOUNDARIES: Forgiveness does not mean what happened was okay. It doesn’t require you to forget, restore trust immediately or even reconcile with the person who hurt you. You can forgive someone and still establish boundaries. And if communicating with that person would be unhealthy or unsafe, forgiveness does not require contact.

1. DON’T DO THE HARD STUFF ALONE: Some hurts need more than a journal and a prayer and there’s no shame in that. Talk to someone you trust: a friend, pastor, coach or qualified counsellor or therapist. Sometimes another person can help us see what we’ve been carrying for so long that we no longer recognize its weight.  

Remember: forgiveness isn’t pretending the hurt never happened. It’s deciding it doesn’t get to control what happens next

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The Letting Go - The Final chapter: What I’ve Learned

Nobody talks about the letting go.

As a mom, it’s been one of the most difficult seasons of parenthood. Yes, harder than that first kindergarten drop-off!

I was just in L.A. visiting my son, who left home exactly a year ago this month, and it struck me all over again just how much I miss him and how much our relationship has changed.

Read Part one here.

When you consider that more than twenty years of our lives are invested in raising, nurturing and caring for a child, it’s easy to see why letting go of that role can be such a daunting task. As a woman who loves too much, and who wasn’t loved in her first marriage, I invested all the love I had in my son. Heart, mind and soul. I’ve written before about how proud I was when he made the leap to move to another country and start living his dream but I also found it incredibly difficult. It felt like a bad break-up, really. Except we’re supposed to be happy about this one because this is what we raised them to do. We spend all those years trying to raise independent, capable humans who will have the courage to go out into the world and build lives of their own. Then, when they actually do it, we're somehow surprised by the giant hole they leave behind. Maybe nobody prepares us for that because letting go is supposed to be the evidence that we did our job well. But knowing that doesn't make you miss them any less.

Biblically, we know that God takes the role of a parent very seriously. We are instructed to raise our children in the "training and instruction of the Lord" without frustrating or exasperating them (Ephesians 6:4). We are to "train a child in the way he should go" (Proverbs 22:6), give good gifts (Matthew 7:11), loving and disciplining them for their sake (Proverbs 13:24), and providing for their needs (1 Timothy 5:8). Ironically, I wonder if those of us who take that responsibility most seriously are also the ones who struggle most when it's time to let go.

Or maybe it's just a mom thing...

At the heart of my difficulty in letting go is fear.

The world can be a scary place. I was always the mama bear when he was young, defending him, protecting him, cheering him on... Now, with him a five-hour plane ride away, I can't take care of him if he gets sick. I can't make sure he's eating properly. I can't know that someone has his back. Perhaps nothing on earth is more testing of our faith than when our children begin to sever the bonds that have held them close to us. Letting go of our children isn't simply turning them loose in the world to fend for themselves. For me, it has meant learning to turn my son over to his heavenly Father. The reality is that he was God's child before he was mine. He was entrusted to me, on loan, for a season. I got the extraordinary privilege of loving him and preparing him but eventually, I also have to trust that God loves him even more than I do. That may be the hardest part.

I have spent most of his life saying, "I've got you". Now I have to trust God when He says the same thing. The more faith I have in Him, the less room there should be for fear. I'm still working on that part.

SO WHAT'S MY JOB NOW?

I still call him "mon petit bébé" (my baby) no matter how tall he gets or how old he is. He is my proudest accomplishment. My greatest joy.

I don't think I would have survived my first marriage without him. Looking back, he gave me a reason to keep going. And when someone has occupied that much space in your heart and your life, perhaps we shouldn't expect the transition into their adulthood to happen without a little grief.

But I've realized something over this past year: My job isn't over. My job description has changed.

While I can't nurture and guard him physically anymore, there are a lot of other things I can do: I can pray for him, encourage him in his walk with God, offer advice when it's asked for. It’s also respecting his privacy just as I would any other adult meaning keeping some of it to myself! I can be a safe place without needing to be the person steering the ship.

Maybe that's the next stage of motherhood: learning how to remain incredibly important in someone's life without needing to be indispensable.

Because something else beautiful happens when we let our adult children go: We get to meet them again, not simply as our children, but as adults. We get to discover who they've become when we're no longer making the decisions. We get to watch them succeed, fail, change their minds, build careers, form relationships, take risks and create lives that may look very different from the ones we imagined for them. And, if we're lucky, somewhere along the way, the relationship becomes something new.

My son is still my son, but he's also one of my favourite people. He's now my best travel buddy and my finest fashion adviser. He’s wise beyond his years and I tremendously respect his opinion and admire his cool demeanour – he definitely didn’t get that from me! He will always have a huge piece of my heart.

PARENTING IS A PROGRESSIVE LETTING GO

Maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised by any of this. Parenting has always been a progressive letting go. The first day of school. The first sleepover. The first time they cross the street without holding our hand. The first time they drive away alone. Their first trip without you. Their first serious relationship. Their first home. At every age and stage, their maturation requires us to loosen our grip a little more. Bit by bit, we step back and let them make their own choices, praying that somewhere beneath all the voices competing for their attention, they will still listen closely for God's.

We spend childhood teaching. Then adolescence guiding. And eventually, adulthood asks something completely different of us: Trust.

Trust the person we raised.

Trust what we put into them.

Trust them to make decisions we wouldn't necessarily make.

Trust them to make mistakes and figure things out.

And, most difficult of all for me, trust God with the parts of their lives we can no longer control.

Maybe that's what letting go really means. Not loving them less. Loving them differently.

A NOTE TO OUR KIDS

And because I can't possibly end this without making a case for why our children should CALL THEIR MOMS!

There actually is some science behind why we moms seem incapable of simply switching off. Research into the maternal brain has found that becoming a mother changes the brain in remarkable ways. Areas involved in attachment, vigilance, emotion, motivation and responding to our children's cues adapt as we become mothers. Motherhood doesn't simply give us someone new to love; in very real ways, our brains adapt to caring for another human being. So after years of listening for cries, watching for danger, checking temperatures, waiting for teenagers to come home, asking whether you've eaten and generally making sure you're still alive, perhaps you can forgive us if we don't magically turn it all off when you move out. Our children grow up and apparently, our mama-bear reflex needs a little more convincing. So when your mother texts, "Everything okay?" because you haven't called lately, remember: she spent decades with part of her attention permanently tuned to you. And while I can't scientifically prove that a 90-second phone call will reset your mother's entire nervous system, I'm willing to volunteer for the study.

Call your mom #JustSaying

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