Forgiveness
Forgiveness.
I have been sitting with this for a while.
I have prayed and reflected on this.
I bought and read The Book of Forgiving: the Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World by Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu back in May. I read every page and did every practice, meditation, journal prompt in the book.
I have been practicing forgiveness in my own life.
This blog post has been in the works…sorting through my notes and my own experiences, figuring out what I really want to say about it (for now).
With that being said, I will bring in a lot of quotes to support my own thoughts and reflections because they are that powerful and I always want to give credit where credit is due.
The main message coming through for me, right now, in all of this, is radical self-forgiveness.
It feels self-centered to admit and write that, but I know that it’s true and relatable to many.
I also recognize and am extremely grateful that I am not in a season of a strong need to work to forgive another (I have had those and will again in the future, but for now the work gets to be primarily internal). Sending you so much love and compassion for whichever season you are in!
In the past, I have worked through forgiving others. I have healed from resentment. I know that I am forgiven by God.
I am the only one holding myself back in being truly forgiven.
“Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than hanging on.” - Eckhart Tolle
Forgiveness of self and others is a form of release and letting go.
“Releasing is refusing to let an experience or a person occupy space in your head or heart any longer. It is releasing not only the relationship, but your old story of the relationship.” - Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu
Let’s take a step back and talk more in depth about what forgiveness is, what it is not, and what it means for us.
Forgiveness is an act of self-compassion that will make more space for inner peace and possibilities.
Forgiveness is not forgetting.
Forgiveness is remembering.
Forgiveness is active healing.
Forgiveness is offered in the remembering.
Forgiveness requires deep compassion.
Forgiveness is not easy.
It is really hard. It hurts. It can open old wounds.
Forgiveness is uncomfortable. AND it sets us free.
Forgiveness is not quick.
It takes time. It is a process.
There are levels and layers of deep healing.
Forgiveness sometimes hurts. Not forgiving also hurts. It is in forgiveness that we find freedom.
Forgiveness is not weakness.
Vulnerability is not weakness.
Expressing and releasing emotion is not weakness.
Forgiveness is brave.
Forgiveness takes courage.
Through forgiveness of our self and others, we build greater self-trust.
We release the ties that hold us back.
Forgiveness grants freedom.
Forgiveness is not injustice.
Forgiveness creates space.
Forgiveness allows empathy and connection back into the conversation.
Forgiveness welcomes in justice.
Forgiveness is rooted in honesty.
“Forgiveness does not relieve someone of responsibility for what they have done.” - Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu
“Forgiveness does not erase accountability.” - Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu
An important and early quote in The Book of Forgiving, says “[t]here is nothing that cannot be forgiven, and there is no one undeserving of forgiveness.”
Ooof! Helpful reminder, but also can be a tough pill to swallow. There is nothing that cannot be forgiven. When we look around in our lives and more broadly our world, that does not always feel true. But it is true. Nothing is unforgivable. And no one is undeserving of forgiveness. We are all human. We all make mistakes. We all deserve forgiveness. Again, not easy, but possible.
One of the most powerful lessons Jesus ever taught, in Matthew 18:21-22, was on forgiveness. Jesus responds to Peter’s ask, “Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?” with “No, not seven times. Seventy times seven.”
In essence, Jesus is telling us to forgive the same person, or ourselves, 490 times. And this is a daily practice. That is a lot of forgiving!
Jesus’ focus, however, was more on the truth of the matter than the math and the exact number. The truth is, as Jentezen Franklin describes in the Bible App Plan “Love Like You’ve Never Been Hurt,” forgiveness is not about keeping score. It is about losing count.
We are all going to get hurt in our lives by others or by abandoning ourselves. Keeping score with a spouse, a friend, a coworker, etc. is not helping us to heal, to forgive, and to move forward.
While getting hurt is reality, getting and staying bitter is a reaction. We can control our reactions. We can practice and improve on how we react to a situation. We can live a lifestyle of constant forgiveness.
We must forgive. All the time. As Jesus does. And as He taught us and instructed us.
As I mentioned above, it is in forgiveness that we find freedom. To find this freedom, we must give voice to our hurts. We find healing in community. We heal in sharing and speaking our truth. We heal by telling our story. We do not heal in isolation.
“We choose to heal and we choose to move forward by being brave and vulnerable enough to feel.” - Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu
Bring it to the light!
Feel it.
Speak it.
Release it.
“We are as sick as the secrets we keep.” - Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu
We find greater healing, true forgiveness, and increased self-acceptance when we choose to do so with others:
“accept our suffering, our vulnerability, and our human frailty” - Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu
We find hope and healing in acceptance of what happened in our past. We choose to move forward with a renewed sense of hope towards our future.
From a more physical perspective, psychologist Fred Luskin in Forgive for Good: A Proven Prescription for Health and Happiness states, “In careful scientific studies, forgiveness training has been shown to reduce depression, increase hopefulness, decrease anger, improve spiritual connection, [and] increase emotional self-confidence.”
I mean who doesn’t want those things: a reduction in depression, an increase in hopefulness, a decrease in anger, an improvement in spiritual connection, and an increase in emotional self-confidence? Sign me up!
I love that phrase “forgiveness training.” It’s like we train our bodies in exercise, our minds in meditation, our breath in breathwork…this is a practice. We need to work on it and train it every single day, like any other hygienic practice. This is mental, emotional, and spiritual hygiene. It can also be physical. If we do not allow for the release, we can carry physical tension in our bodies that can cause issues in the moment or that builds up to something greater. So let it go! Choose to train forgiveness.
As we train this muscle of forgiving, we grow. Growth happens through obstacles and only with resistance. Take a recent example of a time you were working out or exercising in a new and/or different way. Do you remember the physical exertion? The tension? The struggle? The resistance?
That is where your muscles grow.
That is where you find breakthrough!
God does not waste his children’s pain. He turns our pain into purpose. It takes our act of free will to allow this transformation to occur.
There is a Hawaiian practice that I learned of back in May (my theme for the month was Forgive if you haven’t picked up on that yet). The practice is called Hoʻoponopono (Hawaiian pronunciation: [ho. ʔo. po.no.po.no]).
It is a traditional Hawaiian practice of reconciliation and forgiveness. The Hawaiian word translates into English simply as correction, with the synonyms manage or supervise.
This supports everything that we have talked about so far here: reconciliation, forgiveness, correction, manage, supervise. We reconcile with the past. We reconcile with others and with our selves. We choose to forgive. This reconciliation and forgiveness are acts of correction. We are choosing to tell our story and, in some instances, to tell a new story. We manage and supervise our experience and our emotions along our healing journey.
I will emphasize here since I haven’t explicitly, it is a journey. When we “find healing,” that is one level. We may not be fully “healed.” We will get triggered again in the future. We will encounter and uncover deeper layers and levels of healing. These are all opportunities to flex that forgiveness muscle: practice self-forgiveness and forgive those that triggered us or those whom the initial hurt came from again, a layer deeper.
We are nearing the end, so I want to provide some quotes that continue to support me in prioritizing self-forgiveness. These are all from Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu in The Book of Forgiving:
“If forgiving others leads to an external peace, forgiving ourselves leads to an internal peace. It can be so very difficult when you are both the victim and the perpetrator in your own story.”
“Choose to do the work required in self-forgiving. Identifying our feelings and embracing them will help us choose the way to either live with or transform them.”
“Self-forgiveness is self-acceptance.”
Self-forgiveness requires absolute truth.
Self-forgiveness requires humility and hard work.
Self-forgiveness requires a sincere desire to change.
Self-forgiveness requires stepping into unknown territory.
“Forgiveness is nothing less than the way we heal the world. We heal the world by healing each and every one of our hearts. The process is simple, but it is not easy.”
SELF-FORGIVENESS is truly at the core of PEACEMAKING, and we cannot BUILD PEACE with others if we are not AT PEACE with ourselves.
Lastly, I will close with some Scripture verses to support you in this constant practice of forgiveness.
In Colossians 3:13, we are told to forgive one another as God forgave you: “Bear with one another; forgive each other if one of you has a complaint against another. The Lord has forgiven you; now you must do the same.”
In Luke 6:37, Jesus himself advises “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven.”
Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you for reading this post.
Thank you for being you.
Thank you for staying open and curious.
Thank you for being willing to forgive.
I love you. I am grateful you are here.
I am grateful to share this space and a piece of my heart with you all.
xo,
Megan C
