“Do onto others as you would have done onto you, not do onto others as others have done onto you.” Over the summer, I was sitting in mass when I heard the priest say this. Once I absorbed what he said, I felt a little taken aback in that pew. While I had healed a lot from some of the most significant moments of hurt in my life, I realized that I hadn’t exactly forgiven a particular person. At that moment, I had a discovery: if I didn’t get to the root of figuring out how to forgive those who have hurt me, I would run the risk of treating others the same way that person had treated me. However, there’s just one problem: forgiving is really hard! Miranda Lambert even sings, “forgiving’s pretty hard, so I made an art out of forgetting him well” because it is indeed just that hard.
Once mass ended, I got in my car, and I was determined to figure out how to forgive. Finding ways to help me forgive basically became like an assigned project. I decided that I would spend little moments over the course of a week trying to figure out how to forgive that one person I just couldn’t seem to. I started reading articles, listening to podcasts, and talking to some of my closest friends to see what has helped them forgive.
About a week later, while I had been doing all of this “academic research” on forgiveness, I still felt like I hadn’t quite had my “a-ha” moment yet, so to speak. I started to become frustrated with myself because I just wasn’t finding the answer that I had hoped I would find. Then, I realized that I was frustrated because I had questions about the situation I felt had never been answered. Some of these questions were, “why would someone want to treat another person so poorly?” and “why wouldn’t someone apologize if they knew they had caused another person so much hurt?”
Well, I was thinking about these questions one day while I was driving. I turned up the radio, and Lauren Alaina’s song “Doin’ Fine” was playing. She sings, “I’m doin’ fine enough to know that everyone’s a little broken.” Lauren sure is right; we are all a little broken. I had to come to terms with the fact that all of my questions have the same answer: human brokenness. To think I dwelled on those questions for months in counseling, and Lauren Alaina gave me an answer in three minutes and twenty seconds.
Human brokenness explains two things about forgiveness, both from your perspective and the person who did you dirty. First of all, it explains that we have a hard time forgiving as human beings simply because we are broken. It also explains that the reason why the person treated you the way they did was due to their brokenness. It wasn’t because of who you are – or aren’t. For a long time, I was led to believe that I was treated the way that I was due to something I had done. Now looking back, I simply don’t think that was the case.
People may disagree, but I think that you need time and space away from that person to achieve a satisfying sense of forgiveness. You need time away from the situation to process what has happened. With a little time, you can forgive – not forget – but forgive. People may hate the line “forgive, but don’t forget,” but I don’t think you should forget if someone did you really dirty. Boundaries are good. They’re healthy too.
As humans, we have this natural instinct that when a person causes us to experience emotional pain, we believe that he or she is evil. We want “justice to be served” for the wrongs that the “evil” person has done against us. We want that slippery little rat to experience some payback. It’s also usually the people who did us the dirtiest who we never receive an apology from. When we choose to forgive, we let go of the debts we feel are owed to us. We just let the person go off and be free, which in turn makes us feel free too.
What I have learned is that forgiveness means that we genuinely want the best for that person. I have reached the point where I can say that I do, which I could never have imagined ten months ago. By him having a happy life, it will not take away from my happy life. There is enough room in this world for both of us to be happy people. I truly hope he is happy.
Forgiveness will forever be a choice that I make, not a feeling that I have. When I first started trying to figure out this whole forgiveness thing, I was looking for a sense of peace about all that had happened. I’ve had to learn that I will most likely never be 100% at peace with what happened, but I can choose forgiveness, and that should get me to exactly where I need to be.
Forgiveness will set you free, BABY.