A careless word from someone you love.
A lie from someone you trusted.
A cruel remark overheard from a colleague at work.
Whatever the cause, you find yourself in the unwanted and unexpected position of having to do the hard work of forgiveness.
We’ve all been there, right?
Some of the causes are hardly noticeable…. the person who cut you off in traffic this morning caused annoyance, sure, but he didn’t really change the course or tenor of your day. You forgave him without really realizing you were forgiving him. It was one of those split second “roll-of-the-eye, human nature” sort of things.
But, what about the the angry adult child who selfishly lashes out, the co-worker who levels false accusations, the leader at church who consistently ignores anyone not on some favored list? Or the really serious stuff like the unfaithful wife, or the friend who betrays? Well, this is where the resolve to live out our faith is tested and proved authentic. And sometimes this provides a crystal clear opportunity to admit that our resolve isn’t very deep after all…it’s more window dressing than heart-deep beauty.
Like any of you, I’ve been in situations that have cut me to the quick. And also like you, I’ve had to forgive people over and over.
Sometimes I’ve had to forgive the same person over and over. For the same thing.
Ever been in a situation where it feels like that ‘seventy times seven’ figure doesn’t go high enough? Of course you have…I know because some of you have told me of the many, many times you’ve been there. Bless you, my forgiving friends. Your faithfulness encourages me.
I’ve found few people in life harder to forgive than those who hurt one of my girls. Oh, my goodness. Can you relate to this? If you have kids and you’re honest, I just bet there have been a few necks you’ve wanted to wring over the years.
When one of the girls was in grade school, her best friend suddenly turned on her…for no reason. I’m smart enough to know that the 9 or 10 year old female brain is sometimes mercurial and just plain past figuring out. This friend became petulant, mean, hurtful. And the 32 year old Momma of this girl? Well, I expected a little more from her at the time. I think I would probably expect a little more from her if the situation were lived through again.
In any case, the friendship changed; my girl adapted and learned a pretty sweet lesson about how you treat other people and the nature of the kind of friends you can count on. The hurt this caused my daughter was real though, and it didn’t disappear overnight.
I simmered on low as I watched this…and realized that forgiveness might well be a work in progress, for both my daughter and me. Because in addition to fighting the unkindness revealed in the characters of this girl and her mom, I was also fighting the all too real resentment in myself. The fact that our paths crossed often at school functions made me face this realization whether I wanted to or not.
But you know what else that whole little interlude in my daughter’s growing-up years did? It made me think soberly about this:
I have been on the other side of that coin. I’m sure of it.
How many times have I said something that hurt; or passed by an acquaintance without stopping to acknowledge her? Been too busy, been aloof, been exclusive with my group of friends, or made snap judgements about someone…the kind that say much more about me than they do about them?
Well, what a little epiphany that was!
(Perhaps you’re way ahead of me and that epiphany came much sooner to you than it did to me. Good for you, friend!! I wish you would have smacked me on the head with it! This lesson is too good to keep to yourself.)
In any case, we need to be quick to make amends if we’re the guilty party. Don’t wait until time has passed and you think the person you hurt has forgotten. Of course she hasn’t. She may have chosen to forgive, God bless her, or she may be choosing to forgive every time you pass her at a school concert, or at a wedding reception, a Target run or wherever else your paths meet. Your “Oh, friend! I was wrong!” will make that forgiving so much easier to do. It takes the sting out; it takes away the ache of the wound.
And for those who have hurt you? And who will never apologize because they truly don’t remember, or don’t think they did anything wrong? Or even worse….don’t care?
Well, these are tough situations for sure.
Forgiveness is a specific, deliberate choice and like almost all worthwhile things, it doesn’t come easily. It’s an act of both the heart and the will, and I find those things are at serious odds with each other sometimes. At least they are in me.
So, these are the instances where our will leads our heart and we lean in hard to the work ahead of us. Letting go of anger, resentment, bitterness, and the desire to get even takes effort.
It takes a lot of effort.
You’re going to need the help of the God of all grace to do it, friends. I believe that the source of all forgiving comes from the Eternal One. I really do. And those who don’t acknowledge him, yet still find they have the ability to forgive? Well, I believe they are the happy recipient of his common grace…the stuff that’s poured out in all of us, just because we are created in his image and are his divine handiwork. I don’t know about you, but I find that incredibly beautiful.
Practically speaking, when someone hurts me, I try not to respond right away. This doesn’t always work, because I get just as frustrated as you do and the language of snark is as strong in me as it is in you. We need to learn to keep our mouths shut, don’t we? And let our words be refined by the God who asks us to follow his divine example.
Then, I try and identify intention. Sometimes this is easy to do, but other times, not so much. But so, (SO!) often things fall into the unintentional category and we need to be quick to give the benefit of the doubt.
Third, I try and decide if this is one of those things that the passage of time will sort out. For example, if a colleague at work is unprofessional or unkind…well, ok. Many times you can just shrug your shoulders and press on with your day. Whatever their issue, it’s not really affecting your day-to-day agenda, so why worry? Maybe your co-worker is facing something personal and is barely keeping it together. Just move on; it likely has very little to do with you. You just happened to be there.
Years ago, a friend of mine told me she worked with someone who would walk into the office everyday with an ugly, dismissive look on her face. She was the kind of person who made you wish you had taken the stairs instead of the elevator. She was surly and perpetually in a bad mood. When my friend found out later what “home” was like for this woman every single day, she felt just awful. The fact that this mom of four made it to work and could even function given what she faced at home? Absolutely a miracle.
Friends, be people who don’t so easily take offense. (And by “friends”, I mean “me”.)
And finally, if the offense is on-going, repetitive, or turns out to honestly be a big deal, I confront it…hopefully with grace.
Not right away, and not when I’m hopping mad (or crying, which has sometimes been the case), but when I’ve thought calmly about the issue.
Confrontation, the right kind anyway, clears the air and let’s us hear the other side of the story. And many times, the other side has merit that we didn’t think of, or perhaps had sort of purposefully overlooked. It also gives us a chance to tell OUR story.
And of course, at the end of the day, all of these are steps which sometimes will work and sometimes will not. After all, there is always another person (or people) to factor in, and he or she may or may not be cooperative.
Or kind.
Or safe.
Sometimes, there’s a very good reason for a breakdown in communication or relationship. Not all human interaction and restoration is necessary. Or even wise. Our physical and emotional safety (and for sure that of our kids) has to be protected. Forgiveness doesn’t necessarily mean a mending of trust. Those kinds of situations go way, way, WAY beyond forgiving the unfair boss or the mean girl in Calculus 1.
But, here’s the truth and it’s a good truth to sort of let marinate in our hearts for the long haul: forgiveness really does free you up from the costly debt of carrying around sadness, resentment and a wish for retribution.
What helps me MOST in situations like this is to remember that we are all so full of frailty and weakness. We are! But we are also strong and brave and amazing! See what dichotomy exists in each of us? It helps so much to look at each other with the real understanding that we are very, very much alike.
Try this, friends…
Let the hurts that YOU cause be clean ones. Let them arise out of truth told in love, a line drawn in integrity or an action taken in principal. Don’t let them be caused by pettiness. Or heaven forbid, spite.
Hard to do. But good to do!
You know that 10 year old girl from my earlier story? It’s highly unlikely that she ever thinks of the situation with my daughter. I see her only rarely, and by all appearances, she has grown into a sweet, talented and beautiful young woman. I suppose it’s possible that she may think about the scenario in days to come…if her own little boy or girl comes home from school in tears with a story that mirrors the one my girl experienced. But I hope that never happens.
And as TobyMac says, while it’s certainly true that you will never look into the eyes of someone God does not love, it’s also true that you will never meet someone God thought unworthy of forgiveness.
To that end, I’m going to leave you with these words from C.S. Lewis and his amazing little book The Weight of Glory. These have perhaps been the most useful words outside of scripture for me to meditate on when thinking about this hard work that we are both called and commanded to do:
“. . . you must make every effort to kill every taste of resentment in your own heart—every wish to humiliate or hurt him or to pay him out. The difference between this situation and the one in which you are asking God’s forgiveness is this: In our own case we accept excuses too easily; in other people’s we do not accept them easily enough.
As regards my own sin, it is a safe bet (though not a certainty) that the excuses are not really so good as I think; as regards other men’s sins against me, it is a safe bet (though not a certainty) that the excuses are better than I think. One must therefore begin by attending to everything which may show that the other man was not so much to blame as we thought.
But even if he is absolutely fully to blame we still have to forgive him; and even if ninety-nine percent of his apparent guilt can be explained away by really good excuses, the problem of forgiveness begins with the one percent guilt which is left over. To excuse what can really produce good excuses is not Christian character; it is only fairness. To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.
This is hard. It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single great injury. But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life—to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son—how can we do it?
Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night ‘forgive our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.’
We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it is to refuse God’s mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exceptions and God means what He says.
Perspective, right?