SUPERPOWER # 4: Forgiveness

Psychology defines forgiveness as ‘willfully putting aside feelings of resentment toward someone who has committed a wrong, been unfair or hurtful, or otherwise harmed you in some way.’

And that is regardless of whether they apologize or not, or whether they submit an adequate apology or not. Yes, if some elements of information are absent from your apology, it may be hard for them to forgive.

But we’re not talking about apologizing today.

Another definition, more biblically inclined, is that it means not holding a sin against a person any more.

I like the analogy that when you don’t forgive someone and hold a grudge against them, you keep yourself in a prison, and they guard your prison door. So you’re both at prison, but they’re free to come and go at certain times.

Another one says it’s like you drink poison and expect your offender to die a slow painful death.🤷🏽‍♀️

I believe there are stages to forgiveness, especially in the absence of an apology. The stages I passed through were:

• Awareness & acknowledgement of the hurt
• Acknowledging it wasn’t my fault, but that I still needed to forgive myself
• Empathizing with the offender
• Making a conscious decision to verbalize to myself ‘I forgive them/you, and I release them/you’
• Dissipation of anger with more and more processing
• Final difficult step: the psychological definition – releasing emotions of resentment or vengeance towards them

Perhaps you’ve gone through different stages to mine. Please share those with me.

I found you can’t hide feelings of resentment underneath respect and gratitude towards someone.

I was angry for the longest time at people who hurt me. When the anger dissipated, I had to reflect on why I still had issues around those people.

This resentment had remained despite my conscious decision to say ‘I forgive’ and to release the anger. And this is where confusion can set in, when you know but don’t feel like you have forgiven.

I suppose because:

My objective was that I desired a healthy relationship with these people, so I was not going to allow myself to operate subconsciously in that resentment and hurt.

Forgiving someone doesn’t mean you can trust them now, their future behavior will tell.

Forgiving someone doesn’t necessarily mean you should allow them back into your space again. You can give them the gift of space to work on their healing and repentance, and love them from afar.

Forgiveness is not forgetting that the event happened. It’s letting your mind and your body forget the pain of the event.

Forgive & forget? I often wondered if God so endowed me with a powerful memory storing mind, how do I forget? I can’t exactly selectively delete events from my memory.

It’s that your mind and your body/entire neurology have to forget the pain and discomfort of fight, flight or freeze.

But your conscious mind shouldn’t forget, lest you fail to recognize, 🎶here comes that same old pain again🎶

Sort of like a woman giving birth? They say she doesn’t forget the labour but the pain so that she goes again. 

And, Bible scholars please correct me if I’m wrong, nowhere in the Bible are we instructed to forgive and forget. Only forgive.

Maybe that you need to forgive 70×7 times means one develops some sort of amnesia, I don’t know. But let’s move on:

When you decide to forgive someone whom you choose to still allow into your space, you can’t keep on hammering them with the sin they committed.

That’s a superpower. You can’t forget it, but you can’t bring it up! You can bring up how you’re feeling and where you’re at, but not what they did. This is from a more advanced personal growth point of view.

Take your time processing, but I highly suggest you communicate at each stage in your forgiveness process. Otherwise you’ll reach a stalemate in your relationship.

And then, please buckle up for this one: I came to the epiphany that I needed to forgive God as my Father!

Between me and Him, there were unmet expectations, the no’s and the not yet’s, the discipline, the losses and the grieving of loved ones.

However you want to reason against it, and maybe rightfully so, these left me with resentment and anger towards Him. And at times I acted out.

Many times we focus on God being just God, and not on Him being a Father whom, you as His child, have a relationship with.

I realized, if I needed to forgive my earthly father for the times I felt hurt by him, and if God is my Father and I felt hurt (emphasis is on an emotion and not His intentions and will) ‘by Him’, then it stood to reason that I needed to forgive Him.

That was the most liberating thought and feeling ever.

In coaching, I’ve spoken to people holding resentment towards God because of grief and other losses. Well, something’s gotta give.

If this doesn’t scare you, or speak against your spirit, I dare you try it. Say Lord, I know You only have my best interest at heart, but those things right there, those hurt, and I developed resentment towards You. I forgive You, thanks for forgiving me.

On the flipside of the forgiveness coin is when you need to be forgiven.

I find one of the most challenging aspects is forgiving yourself. I wasn’t even aware I was walking in unforgiveness towards myself.

It’s easier to forgive others, but you? Another story. Because:

1. We generally tend to be so hard on ourselves and,
2. We generally don’t look inwards to see that we are telling ourselves horrible stories about ourselves on what happened.

It follows suit, if you can’t forgive yourself, you’ll find it hard to forgive others. And you’ll find it hard to receive forgiveness. #Selffirst.

Receiving and accepting the free forgiveness from your Heavenly Father first is paramount to you forgiving yourself.

This also means that, should you be in a position to ask for forgiveness and you are not gifted with it, the good Lord has forgiven you, and you have forgiven yourself.

Apologize, and sincerely. We talk about apologizing in the last issue of the Superpower series.

What follows is repentance, not just the word, on your part.

I call forgiveness a gift because sometimes they don’t tell you you were wrong so you could apologize and move on on a healthier slate.

This could be that they may not be processing, they take a long time, up to years, to process, or they processed and decided to not forgive you.

Either way, you don’t know that you need to ask for forgiveness and, especially if it’s a long distance relationship, it just dwindles. I suppose that’s life lifing.

Or you could be intuitive enough to then ask for their forgiveness and hope for the best.

If it’s the end of a season for a relationship, people need closure. If you care about them, give them that opportunity to apologize and let each other fare well.

THE TAKE HOME

We should see forgiveness first and foremost as a superpower of releasing ourselves from the prison or bondage of the hurt caused.

When you are there, then it’s about releasing the other party.
Forgiveness is a potent glue to relationships with God, with yourself, and with others.
Forgive yourself.
Somebody asked me ‘why do I hold grudges?’ I’d say start within yourself. Are you forgiving of yourself? Are you too hard on yourself? Are you a perfectionist?
Do you recognize that forgiveness is for your own health? Are you aware that you can choose to forgive without an apology?
Is there a way you can empathize with others in the situation and maybe change your perspective on it?
Remember you see the world as you see yourself. Is it really that person you remain angry at? Or could it be your very own self?

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