Forgiveness: Part 2

                I’ve come a long way since I wrote the first part of this blog post.  I’ve talked about forgiveness with my counselor, my pastor, and my support group; I’ve heard a sermon about it; I’ve read about it in more books; and even prepared lessons about it, since forgiveness was the kids’ virtue for May.  I think I’ve finally come to peace with what forgiveness looks like.

                I think it’s amazing that such a basic tenet of our faith can be so undefined for me as a 32-year-old, life-long Christian.  The question I’ve been struggling with for months is simply, “What is forgiveness, really?”

                What is forgiveness?  I think my former understanding of forgiveness was that it was a release of negative emotions.  Someone hurt me, but I’m not going to be mad about it or have negative emotions toward that person because I’ve forgiven them.  Now, I think that is a faulty definition.  Forgiveness is not about emotions.  You can forgive someone and still have strong negative emotions toward him.  You make the choice to forgive, and then pray for God to heal your emotions.

                That’s what my counselor told me.  That’s what my pastor told me.  And it didn’t sit well with me for a while.  It doesn’t seem right that you can forgive and still have negative emotions.  After you’ve forgiven, the resentment and anger and hardness should be gone.  That’s what I thought.

                But I’ve made peace with the idea.  We don’t have a lot of control over our emotions.  We can’t make the hard feelings go away just by willing them away.  We can retrain our thoughts, which affect our emotions, but that is a process done over time, not in a matter of moments or days or even weeks.  If I must wait to forgive until there is no hardness at all in my heart, then I will be waiting a long time.

So, if forgiveness is not about changing the way you feel about a person, what is it?

Forgiveness is the choice to not punish, to release your right for restitution.  Forgiveness says, “You hurt me.  You wronged me.  You owe me an attempt to make things right.  But I release you from that obligation.  I will not punish you.  I will not ask you to try to make up for your actions, even though I am angry about those actions.”

This is still very difficult sometimes.  It is okay to enforce consequences for someone’s behavior.  But at what point do consequences become punishment?  That can be a pretty blurry line, especially for the person who feels like they are being punished.

I think the heart of the matter is – the heart.  I have no desire in my heart to punish my husband.  I want to forgive him.  Although I still have hard feelings toward him, those feelings do not motivate my actions toward him.  So I think I can say that I am enforcing consequences, not punishment.

Another facet of forgiveness that I have come to peace with is that it is a process, not an event.  It might happen in a moment, but then again it might stretch out for years.  It’s not that I haven’t forgiven my husband at all; I have started the process.  My heart wants to forgive, and I am forgiving, but I am not done forgiving.

Here is how Jerry Sittser puts it in A Grace Disguised (yes, I know, my frequent quotations of this book are bordering on plagiarism, but it’s just so good!):

“Forgiveness rarely happens in an instant…  Forgiveness is more a process than an event, more a movement within the soul than an action on the surface…  In one sense, forgiveness is a lifelong process, for victims of catastrophic wrong may spend a lifetime discovering the many dimensions of their loss.  I have no vain notions that I have finally and forever forgiven the one who was responsible for the accident.  I may have to forgive many times more – such as at the weddings of my children and at the births of my grandchildren, for these events will remind me not only of gracious gifts given but also of precious people taken away.

“Though forgiveness may not have an ending, it has a beginning.  It begins when victims identify the wrong done to them and feel the anger that naturally rises in the soul.  They realize that what happened to them was inexcusable and should not have happened.  Before victims can show mercy, in other words, they must claim justice.  Before they can forgive, they must accuse.”

Forgiveness is a process.  It starts with recognizing the wrong that was done and calling it what it is.  It is choosing to release the right for punishment or restitution.  It does not necessarily affect a victim’s emotions toward the offender.

Those few sentences seem simple enough, but it took me months to come to these conclusions and have peace about them. 

 Even though I cannot say that I have forgiven my husband, I can say that I am forgiving him.  Even though I still have hard feelings toward him, I can say that those emotions are unwanted.  The hardness that I am discovering in my heart is frightening to me.  I do not want it there.  I want to forgive.  And that desire to forgive is, in fact, the very essence of forgiveness itself.

So now I am trying to navigate that tricky territory between consequences and punishment.  I am trying to figure out how to acknowledge my negative emotions without berating my husband.  I am trying to figure out how to get rid of my negative emotions without simply suppressing them.  I look forward to the day when the relationship is restored, but I am not ready to jump to reconciliation right away.  And so I say, although I have not forgiven my husband, I am in the process of forgiving him.  And I finally have a peace about where I’m at in the process.