Forgiveness is a challenge for many...ok it’s a challenge
for me. I have this uncanny ability to hold onto the feelings of rejection,
disappointment, and distrust like they were a multimillion lottery ticket. I
have been known to hold a grudge until it disintegrates in my hand. But...why?
What purpose does it serve?
I personally have used it to simulate some sense of power
over a situation. When I feel wounded, feeling self-righteous about how I was
wronged becomes my armor. But, as I have learned in the past, this un-forgivingness
will eat away at you.
For years I held my father’s absence over his head. I
relived the years of abuse I endured in his absence and I took every
opportunity to remind him. But one day I found that all the torture I was
trying to get him to feel, all the pain I wanted him to see in me, came
crashing down on my head. I found myself in the living room of my Aunts house
in wrapped in a towel, curled up in a ball, crying hysterically, my hair had
begun to fall out over the stress I insisted on living every day, in the name
of not forgiving my father.
He didn't deserve to be forgiven! What he did (or didn't do)
hurt me. But what I didn’t realize was that I wasn't hurting anyone more than
myself by not forgiving my father.
Often we look at forgiveness as something we do for others,
when really we forgive for ourselves. When we let go of whatever hurt has been
caused, when we choose to be free of that pain, we are helping ourselves.
Forgiveness is one of the most selfish and justified acts that one can commit.
People tried to tell me to let go, "just let go"
they would say. But to me it wasn't that easy. I felt that if i "let
go" that would mean that I had lost, I would be saying that I deserved all
that I endured. Forgiving meant to me that I wouldn't get to heal, I wouldn't
get to be validated, but the truth is forgiveness is the beginning of the
healing process. To forgive does not mean erasing whatever has happened from
your memory, it doesn’t mean ignoring it, it simply means to take the power of
that situation back for yourself. It means neutralizing the pain, rejection,
disappointment and moving past it.
Forgiveness is also a process. As easy as it seems to just
let go, there is also a process to it. If someone has wronged you, you have the
right to be mad, its dwelling and wallowing in it that is the problem. So be
mad, yell, scream, and cry but do that with the understanding that this is not the
end. Again, forgiveness is just the beginning.
So what happened between me and my Dad? I cut my hair off, got a protein treatment,
held onto my anger all the way to Nicaragua, didn't speak to him until I got
back to the states. I screamed, and cried, he hugged me, I forgave him, and we
began to get over it. Do I want to slide back into the familiar feeling of
holding a grudge against him? Do I feel like a victim? Do I hold the occasional
pity party? Yea. But then I realize that I don’t like the way that feels, so I
do the work, I identify why I am back in that space and I pull myself out of
it. I forgive, every day I need to and it’s hard but it’s worth it. Forgiveness
looks better on me anyway.
