Questions from KTIX listeners
August 11, 2008 | T. Suzanne Eller
Question: I heard you on KTIX yesterday. You said that forgiveness is the foundation of healing, but what if the person doesn’t deserve forgiveness? I can’t forgive someone who isn’t sorry, who continues to hurt people, and who is a miserable excuse for a parent. I want to give my child everything I didn’t have. If forgiving is part of that, then I don’t know what to do.
If someone deserved forgiveness, then it wouldn’t be forgiveness. Many people are confused about the topic of forgiveness. They think that it means that what happened is okay, or that abuse can continue. Forgiveness is letting go of the offense so that you can move forward. The abuse that you suffered shouldn’t have happened. Every child deserves to be nurtured and loved and protected by the adults in his or her life. But if you are still struggling with anger, rage, bitterness, or any other unhealthy emotion or response years later, then the abuse continues, even if the offender is nowhere around. You are still responding to the abuse, and it does affect your current relationships. Anger and bitterness are hard to push down for too long.
It’s important to understand what we can change and what we cannot. I can’t change the past. I don’t have the power to undo anything that took place. But as an adult I want to be whole and free and joyfilled and free of the entanglements of the past.
I forgive freely because I can’t change any of those things, and I can’t change any other person, but I can change me and my perspective and my path in life.
Forgiveness can start with a willingness to forgive. “God, this is bigger than me, and I need your help. It doesn’t seem possible, but I’m placing it in your hands. Work in my heart and life so that these emotions and feelings will be made whole.”
It’s a process.
And It’s freeing. The day that I realized that I had completely forgiven was the day I knew that I could be whatever it is that God wanted me to be — a joyfilled woman, a good mom, a loving friend and wife to Richard, a friend, a woman open to all the possibilities with no entanglements to the past.
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