Forgiveness: The Hardest Thing

Forgiveness. Oh boy. This is such a loaded topic for me.

I’ve always thought of myself as someone who was pretty good at forgiving. I’m not a grudge holder. I’ve always been grateful for the doctrines of repentance and forgiveness.

But then, maybe like you, my life was changed forever due to someone else’s choices. Someone else’s selfish choices. Forgiveness became a mountain to climb when it entailed someone deliberately choosing to hurt me. Especially when it included someone who was supposed to protect me and someone who was supposed to be my friend.

This has really been quite a journey for me. It has been a huge test to my character, resilience, faith, vision. I feel like I am closer to it than I have been before. But there seems to be this huge block (or two) for me, and I’ve been trying to figure out what exactly it is.

So what is forgiveness?

It is: forgiving regardless of whether they deserve it. Regardless of if they are sorry. Regardless of if they repent. Regardless of the sin. Regardless of if your marriage makes it or not, your spouse stays or goes.

It is not: keeping a toxic person or relationship in your life. Continuing in an abusive relationship, or allowing your boundaries to be crossed. You do not have to maintain contact with someone if it is unhealthy.

How do you know if you have forgiven someone? The best I can figure out with therapists and Bishops is that when you have forgiven you feel peace inside when you think of the person and/or situation. It is when you don’t feel that surge of anger coming up, when you stop fantasizing about any level of revenge.

I am still working on it. My Bishop says this is okay. I worry that I have missed some kind of deadline. But oh, how hard this has been. It has impacted so many areas of my life and I have been diligently working on my own empowerment and trust issues. I believe the Lord knows how hard I have worked.

Back to those stumbling blocks. The best I can figure out, I am scared to let go and forgive. I am scared that if I don’t have that anger, that I will let my guard down. I won’t be in protect mode and someone can come along and hurt me like that again. And I can’t let that happen. I’ve been working with my therapist on the belief that I am a wiser person now, my eyes are open, and I can take care of myself. But I can tell you from experience, it takes time to make that shift.

And I will throw myself under the bus here and admit something that is a bit embarrassing, but might resonate with you as well. I mean, reality isn’t pretty, right? There is definitely that part of me that feels angry that they can be forgiven and move forward with their life, and I am still stuck holding the ball of this pain and still in a healing journey. It feels so unfair. So part of me feels like I forgiving means they get away with it.

Yes, I know, there’s not always a lot of logic in these limiting beliefs. I get that they are stories my wounded self is making up. But it still requires work.

I think that’s one thing I have learned the most about the gospel. I was so angry with how unfair the whole thing is. I was so angry with how easy the other woman’s repentance process was. The reality is I had to endure more consequences due to my husband’s repentance process than she did. I could not believe the unjustness of it. The betrayal, the lies, the emotional abuse and manipulation involved.

Then I realized that at no time did God promise fairness. He never promised that if we were “good” we would not experience unjustness or betrayal or abuse. In fact, he promised us the opposite. His own son’s life, our Savior, is the perfect example of this. He was abused, betrayed, experienced profound losses of all different natures. He experienced loneliness, hurt, deep pain and sorrow. I have take solace in this and in the stories of many of those in the scriptures, and of those men and women in the Gospel. I have thought of Emma Smith and her backbreaking trials.

I told the Lord the other day that I knew I would experience trials, but I really did not understand that I could experience such deep pain and backbreaking pain and for so long. This week I picked up the Come Follow Me lessons for the first time in a while. It was about Paul writing from jail and talking about joy in all trials and being able to endure anything with the strength of the Lord (Phillipians and Collossians). It really spoke to me. And that’s the hard thing, is constantly trying to focus on giving it to the Lord over and over and over again. Trying to focus on gratitude. The constant fight to not let it run my life. To have power over my own life. I don’t want this hurt or for them to continue to have power over me.

I long to talk to others. To know how they approach this and where they are in the process. I will keep you updated on mine. It seems like it’s going to take awhile. 🙁