Learning to forgive others starts by truly learning how to forgive yourself.

MEANING

RELATED ARTICLE: https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/in-depth/forgiveness/art-20047692

According to the Mayo Clinic, forgiveness is a decision to let go of resentment and thoughts of revenge. 

Forgiveness does not keep a record of mistakes. What someone did could have hurt and continue to hurt you, but extending forgiveness means you are making the personal decision to let go of the bitterness and simply move on. 

THE CHALLENGE

It is challenging to forgive others, because it certainly doesn’t always feel easy or natural. A lot of times, it can even feel unjust, because to get a sense of justice-served sometimes means we almost want the person who hurt us to suffer just as much as we have by whatever mistake they made.

In other words, withholding forgiveness is holding a grudge. When we hold onto a grudge and remind someone of what he or she did, it’s often out of a desire to have justice be served and make them feel the pain! 

Forgiving others can be tough also because it reminds us of the past that we don’t always want to revisit. Just because we’ve been hurt before doesn’t mean we should shut others out or shut down our hearts. This awareness of reconciliation should be felt. Our tears have a purpose and God created them for us for a reason: To feel and acknowledge our emotions. 

FREEDOM

While we think of forgiveness as freeing the person who made the mistake, forgiveness frees the forgiver.

Matthew West, a Christian songwriter and singer, has a song called “Forgiveness”, and I really love the lyrics:

It’ll clear the bitterness away

It can even set a prisoner free

There is no end to what its power can do

So let it go and be amazed by what you see through eyes of grace

The prisoner that it really frees is you

https://youtu.be/FMn0QNdiuGE

How beautiful it is to know that when we forgive, it frees us from a prison of resentment and closed up emotions. Harboring bitterness leaves little room for new memories to take root and bloom, and it does nothing but drain our precious energy each and every day.

Learning the grace to forgive gives you something even more beneficial and life-giving: It heals you, helps to stitch up your wounds, and moves you forward.

I wanted to share how I learned my favorite step-by-step way to forgive someone. I’ll never forget the day I went to a small church service at the back of a hotel. That day rocked my world, because I felt so broken when I walked into the service and was holding onto intense hurt caused by someone years prior. After the sermon, I headed toward the pastor and asked for help on how to forgive this person. He taught me this prayer:

1. “Lord, this person hurt me in this way _________ and it made me feel ______________.”

2. “But I release them from all moral bondage and I forgive them.”

You can recite this prayer on your own. This prayer served me so well when I was in that moment of hurt and truly allowed me let go of that brokenness forever. 

THE OTHER PERSON

My dad and I have an incredibly special relationship, but it definitely didn’t start out that way. When I was a teenager, I was a little feisty. Admittedly, I wanted to argue and push my parents beyond their limits on the daily, so I definitely take a lot of the blame.

When we argued, his words pierced like a sword and seeped through my tough facade. We could each be just recovering from the yelling match of a lifetime, and yet I knew one thing deep down: This would never get better without forgiveness. My dad led the way and he often would usually come to apologize and ask me to forgive him and I would usually ask the same. 

It takes courage to forgive someone, especially someone you live with, because it can be very challenging to see this person multiple times per day and still treat hurtful words and disrespectful behavior as water under the bridge. But, not matter how hurt we felt, that is what each of us would do. We would get into another fight, and then forgive one another again until the next fight and the next steps of forgiveness. It was a cycle. 

When we forgive, we let the other person dig themselves out from the weight of feeling regret and shame about something so he or she can try again. The teenager in me knew that in order to give my dad the gift of trying again, he had to start fresh and freshly forgiven.

I celebrated my 16th birthday with just my mom and dad, and I remember clearly sitting on our old green and white striped couch when my dad gave me this little box. The little box had the name of the local jeweler on it.

My dad had gotten an antique ring I had pointed out to my mom weeks before, and had it engraved inside with the words: “Love, Dad.”

To this day, that ring makes me smile. I think of a daughter and a dad who fought so hard for a now unbreakable relationship. The key to it all? Forgiveness. Forgiveness that freed us both to have a fresh start and try again.

WHAT IF?

Lastly, what if we can’t forgive? What if we have tried and feel like we simply cannot let go enough to forgive someone?

For something like this, a counselor could be immensely helpful as well as journalling, prayer, and spending time asking yourself: “why would they have behaved that way?” These ideas are from a Mayo Clinic article.

I hope you found this episode helpful in some way. Forgiveness is tough, but so precious when we receive it. Who is someone we can extend that gift of grace to today? It doesn’t have to be in person or out loud, because sometimes, like Matthew West’s song says, sometimes the prisoner that it really frees is you.

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Think about the hurt you’re working to forgive? What changed in your life when you started free yourself from the bondage of unforgiveness?

I would love to know about it. Comment it down below or send me an email.

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