by | April 17, 2016 · 7:40 pm

How to forgive for real

Forgive

Easy to say … hard to do.  This video explains some very basic points about the nature of forgiveness that many of us have never encountered before.

Forgiveness < MUST VIEW

H/t Bluebird of Bitterness

7 Comments

Filed under Loose Pollen

7 responses to “How to forgive for real”

  1. bluebird of bitterness's avatar bluebird of bitterness
    April 18, 2016 at 12:46 pm

    Wish I’d known all this when I was younger, when I had so many misconceptions about forgiveness! This is by far the best thing I have ever seen on the subject.

    Like

    • chrissythehyphenated's avatar chrissythehyphenated
      April 19, 2016 at 1:22 am

      I feel the exact same thing. I’d figured out a lot of this on my own but only after a lot of therapy and many, many years of believing that Christian forgiveness required me to stay in relationship with people who were not in the least repentant.

      Liked by 1 person

      • bluebird of bitterness's avatar bluebird of bitterness
        April 19, 2016 at 10:17 am

        Amen to that, Chrissy. I had to unlearn the foolish notion that if I forgave someone who had screwed me over, then I had to behave forever afterward as if the screwing-over had never occurred. No one ever told me that it was possible to forgive someone who had harmed me, but still avoid that person to the extent possible, and refuse to trust someone who had already proven that he was not trustworthy. I really wanted to forgive, because a) I knew it was the right thing to do, and b) the Bible says that if I don’t forgive then I can’t be forgiven… but I made it so much harder than it needed to be. I used to agonize over this, thinking that I must be a horrible person because I couldn’t forgive certain people even though I wanted to. Now I know that it’s nonsensical to say “I want to forgive [insert name here], but I just can’t.” If I want to forgive them, then I have forgiven them, and if I haven’t forgiven them, it’s because I don’t want to. (Luckily for me, I always want to, because holding grudges is not my style. 🙂 )

        Liked by 1 person

        • chrissythehyphenated's avatar chrissythehyphenated
          April 20, 2016 at 7:15 pm

          ITA, except for the holding grudges part. That’s one of my besetting sins. I didn’t start to get a grip on the “forgive means letting go of the grudge and it’s not just okay, it’s GOOD to keep your distance from dangerous people” thing until I saw my family’s meanness hurting my kids. I’d been playing the doormat for years, having seen only two options — become like them (bullies) or be their victim. One night, after a SOP family gathering, Mama Buzz (abt 11 yo at the time) said, “Why are they so mean to you? You don’t do ANYTHING.” Then I spent three therapy sessions detoxing the mean remarks from that one evening.

          My therapy was expensive and I had bigger fish to fry from the past. Wasting 3 sessions on the latest round of the same old family crap woke me up to how my doormat-iness was harming my husband and children economically and also by making me cranky.

          I realized (DUH!) that “Love thy neighbor as thyself” doesn’t work if you don’t LOVE THYSELF. Allowing myself to be bullied decade after decade was hardly loving me, so the family’s favorite doormat grew some very polite teeth. I literally stood in front of a mirror to practice some kind, but firm responses to their standard insults.

          The sad thing is that, instead of waking them up to how mean they were and maybe inspiring some respect, my embargo on Chrissy-bullying just made them ignore me completely. One of my brothers stopped even looking at me. I simply was not there any more.

          I didn’t say anything mean; I just told them as nicely as possible that I was tired of their mean remarks toward me. I started hanging with my girls and my nieces at family gatherings. They thought I was a laugh riot and one of them still makes a real effort to stay in touch.

          Liked by 1 person