I want to forgive, but it's hard

Have you ever wanted someone to tell you how? You understand that harboring bitter pain is harmful, but letting go is easier said than done.  You want to get rid of the pit in your stomach, but it seems to have a stubborn mind of its own.  You admit that your relationships would be less complicated if you could let go of resentment, but how is that even possible? 

I love a home with a view. Who doesn’t? In our journey of life, we exist within overlapping realities of the visible and invisible. The earthly and the heavenly. We get great advice in the book of Hebrews that establishes our vantage point in the heavenly realm. It says: “Making every effort to live in peace with everyone..” promotes new beginnings and an entirely new point of view. And the view from a place of peace is breathtaking.  

So what does it look like in your life to live in peace with everyone? The sweet, soft, and beautiful message of forgiving others look good on you. It doesn’t make you look weak but rather exhibits your courage, your wisdom, and your heart after God. We forgive when we discover that we really want to forgive, and we want to forgive when we want to heal ourselves from the hangover of a wounded past.  

We have often been given the request: “Just tell me how to forgive. I understand it’s the right thing to do, I know I need to, but just tell me how. It’s really difficult. That person hurt me, so it doesn’t make sense. It was a huge injustice, so forgiveness seems out of the question. I want to protect my dignity, and forgiveness feels like I’m enabling behavior that is not acceptable. Please help.” 

There are two separate issues that we often tangle together. Restoration happens between two people, but forgiveness is just you. Forgiveness is a personal experience that happens inside one person at a time. What happens to the other person, is up to that person.

People often get scared to forgive, because if I forgive, won’t I be left vulnerable and unprotected? Again, two separate perceptions get tangled up together. There’s a difference between a wall and a shield. A wall makes you reactionary with anger and isolation. You feel misused and mistreated, therefore you have to have a hard heart to protect yourself. Similar, but in essence, very different is a shield. A shield is your personal access to God’s wisdom, and you can live in honesty. You feel so protected by Jesus that you can have a soft heart at all times.  

If you’ve built a wall around your heart, you have constructed an obstacle between you and another person, but mostly you have done a disservice to your atmosphere of love and joy.  

When we forgive, we have removed an obstacle towards reconciliation, and broken down our wall of bitterness and hardness. We trust God to be our personal bodyguard and protector.   

Maybe you feel justified to stay mad, but it won’t make you happy. Feeling justified and full of revenge is over-rated. Have you ever taken a Tylenol or other pill and you didn’t swallow it soon enough and the bitter taste began to dissolve into your taste buds? The expression on my face is scrunched up with disgust just thinking about it. It’s worse than sour, it’s full-on bitter.  

When we get obsessed with what someone did to us, we end up feeling misery. It robs us of daily joy! Taking inventory of our thought-life means we notice where we give our attention. Revengeful thoughts seemed to taste sweet and luxuriously delicious, but the after-taste is dreadful! Bitterness is a taste-related word. 

In your forgiveness journey, don’t jump ahead in your decision of reconciliation within a relationship. Giving mercy is different than embracing them back into our lives. Depending on the offense, and your need for protection, it isn’t wise to control the outcome. Whether that person is restored to opportunity and privilege depends on reasonable judgments about justice and safety, and their own willingness to do heart work! 

Forgiveness builds your side of the bridge, but the other person has a side of the bridge as well!

Building a bridge takes a lot of thought, engineering, ingenuity, and effort. Will your relationship heal? You start with forgiving them and having invisible conversations with them. In other words, you can rehearse your side of the conversation over and over again and your heart begins to feel the resolve. Let the miracle of forgiving do its work of healing and don’t control the process of restoration.  

If you are willing, ask God for the desire to forgive. Forgiveness is such a choice. We forgive when we really want to out of a desire to heal ourselves from the wounded past. And when we do forgive, we are doing what comes naturally to anyone who has felt the extravagance of being forgiven.  

We do wonderful things just because it suits us. We smile because it suits us! and it makes us shine and twinkle. Forgiving suits us. It matches our condition of being imperfect and grateful that we have been forgiven by others, and by God. When the woman poured expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet, he made such an important statement about love and life: If one knows she has been forgiven much, she loves phenomenally. If someone feels the joy of having been given much, she is capable of loving much. Our ability to love is proportionate to our feelings of gratitude about life.

God invites all the thirsty, the hungry, the weary, and the prodigals back to their true home. “You shall go out with joy, and be led forth in peace, the mountains, and the hills before you shall burst into song. (Isaiah 55:12) We respond out of our heart condition. If you feel loved, you will forgive easier. We teach our kids, “You become like who you hang out with!” Let’s hang out with Jesus...Jesus has a lot of mercy. Our view from the place of peace is truly out of this world. 

Hear more about this topic on Episode 69 of All About Relationships Podcast with Bob and Audrey.