Thoughts on Forgiveness

Sometimes forgiveness is simple.
Sometimes it can be hard and fast and over before you even have to think about it.
But sometimes it's not simple.
Sometimes the thing you're trying to forgive feels too big to even acknowledge, let alone afford the conscious thought required to process it.
Sometimes forgiveness is complicated by too many moving parts.
How do you forgive what doesn't change?
How do you forgive the person who isn't sorry they hurt you?

I'm learning that it's okay to forgive in parts when forgiving all at once feels impossible. Healing occurs gradually and in stages. Forgiveness can, too.

I'm learning that sometimes forgiveness has to be fluid. You choose it and you keep choosing it because at the end of the day, you're only human. But maybe one day you choose it, and the next you feel so much that it seems impossible again. Two steps forward, one step back is 1,000% an an acceptable model, because emotions are hard and feelings are valid and "pain demands to be felt*."

I'm also learning that forgiveness is for me more than it is for anyone else. For so long, I resisted; in part because forgiving something this big felt like letting them off easy, or like I was doing them a favor. It felt like self-betrayal. But recently, I've begun to truly appreciate what it means when they say that to withhold forgiveness is like swallowing poison and and waiting for the other person to die. It's been costing me. Whereas to forgive, to let it all go, and to move forward without any of this holding me back or weighing me down feels like the best gift I could ever give myself.

And so slowly, clumsily, I'm learning how to dance this particular dance.
Always to the tune of grace (upon grace, upon grace, upon grace).
In the name of healing;
In the name of moving forward;
And in the name of freedom.


*John Green, The Fault in Our Stars