Forgiveness Challenge Day 5: What Holds Us Back?

"I would like to share with you two simple truths:  there is nothing that cannot be forgiven, and there is no one undeserving of forgiveness."  -Desmond Tutu, The Book of Forgiving:  The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World. 

The book arrived in the mail yesterday, and I've just started reading it.  I'm only on page 3 of the Introduction and already I am inspired.  How could the people of South Africa have chosen the path of forgiveness in light of the atrocities that had happened to them?

The past two days in the Forgiveness Challenge we have looked at the things that hold us back from forgiveness.  Things like thinking the other person needs to apologize, thinking that people who forgive are weak, thinking that forgiving means condoning or forgetting or letting people off the hook. 

I agree with Bishop Tutu that there is no one undeserving of forgiveness.  I believe it with all my heart.  Every human being is created by God in the image of God and every human being is beloved of God.  If you never hear me say anything else, hear me say that.  What frustrates me is that as deeply as I hold that belief, I still find it difficult to forgive when harm has been done to me.  What I realized today is that most of the people who have harmed me in my life have not done so intentionally.  I have blessedly not been a victim of malicious violence.  Most of the people who have hurt me are broken or sick or simply more interested in getting their needs met than in helping me meet mine.  Or they used methods that might have been helpful to others but were harmful to me because of who I am.

These people are most definitely deserving of forgiveness.  And in this moment sitting by myself in my home, I forgive them.  I do.  They were doing their best at the time.  We all do things that hurt others and I, for one, hope that those I've hurt will forgive me.

Where the problem comes is when I then see or deal with these people again or with new ones who hurt me, and all my loving, forgiving thoughts fly out the window as my stomach tightens into knots and my pulse races and my face gets hot, and I will the ground to open up and swallow me.  Or I have conversations in my head and yell at the people.  Or I stutter and stammer and have no ability to be natural and loving because I'm so angry or scared that I can't look past my own feelings.

I want to learn how to get from thinking I have forgiven to actual forgiveness.  With God's help, I will.