Learning to Forgive; Learning to Change
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Learning to Forgive; Learning to Change
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I had to forgive my dead husband again today. I didn’t want to. It’s been nine years, and I expect that I shouldn’t be so angry at him anymore. But I still am. And under that I still get scared, though not nearly so much.
When I start recounting the hurts, I can feel my heart start to race and my chest get tight. My adrenaline kicks in and I’m ready to fight or flee. It even happens when I just pass by those emotional neighborhoods of fear and hurt where I used to live.
It does me no good to recount the hurts, and it probably doesn’t help my blood pressure. When I feel the anxiety mounting, I have to stop the recounting. I think that forgiving means to stop counting. And how many times are we to forgive? Seventy times seven. Well, I could list 490 things that hurt me…it wouldn’t be very hard. I could just list the times I went to bed scared and alone. Or the things he said that caused me to doubt myself. But that would be counting, and unforgiveness is me breaking my own heart.
The more that you love someone, the harder it is to draw the line between help and enabling. In the past, I found myself making excuses about his behavior. What he said, what he did or didn’t do were all fodder for my imagination and its ensuing explanation for his action or inaction.
I came to realize that the person who was most taken in by my explanations was me. It wasn’t until I was able to be transparent about what was going on in my home – all of it – that I had the chance to gain an outside perspective. As is often the case, I had been isolated…no one knew every part of it, except me. With the help of dear friends and that outside observer, I was able to remove myself from the situation. When I started my own recovery from codependency, I learned about qualifying events.
A qualifying event is the event that causes someone to make a change; to look for new ways to approach old problems. It’s the consequences of a person’s actions that are so bad that it can wake them up and motivate them to seek recovery. I realized that my approach to my husband’s struggles was often to prevent bad things from happening…to step in and fix the situation to keep the consequences of his disease from affecting our family. What I really needed to do was to focus on my own behavior; I was using old ways in an attempt to fix old problems and my efforts were futile.
Let’s engage in a logic exercise for a moment:
If I love a person engaged in destructive behavior, I want them to ultimately live a full and good life.
If a qualifying event is the thing that will precipitate this change, then shouldn’t I want the qualifying event to unfold in their lives in the hopes that it does cause them to make better choices?
Most times, my actions to prevent the natural consequences of a person’s decisions will result in them NOT learning anything valuable from the situation and perhaps also reinforcing the undesirable behavior. If the person makes a poor choice that results in a negative consequence, my best option is to be a loving and sympathetic observer to their plight, instead of mitigating the consequences of their decisions.
As we work on forgiveness and finding new ways to deal with old problems, it is important to realize that sometimes we don’t need to restore the relationship to what it once was. I don’t believe that Jesus calls us to live in submission to toxic relationships or people. We can forgive them and then make different choices.
When we are blessed enough to have a front row seat to God’s handiwork in bringing about healing and recovery in those we love, we can work to build a new relationship with that person. It is an opportunity to get a brand-new start in a marriage, family relationship or friendship.
Christ has given us a clear path to forgiveness from God. When we experience that forgiveness, we can extend it to others.
“Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” Ephesians 4:32
What good news! We can stop breaking our own hearts, by forgiving others.
Trusting God with our anger, hurt, fear and sorrow will lead to joy. It’s not an immediate thing, but it can happen if we let the Holy Spirit do the work in our lives.
Some additional resources:
Celebrate Recovery at Willowdale Chapel
“Living Reconciled” by P. Brian Noble. A YouVersion devotional that leads you through approaches to reconciliation based on 2 Corinthians.
Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay
ABOUT OUR BLOGGER
Sarah Flowers lives in idyllic Chadds Ford, where she is steeped in beauty and connection to the land and its history. She loves coffee and flowers and getting to know Jesus. A lifelong learner, she seeks to follow God’s plan to bring justice to the under-resourced. Sarah is a self-declared serial optimist and melodiphile; there’s always a path to the sunny side and a soundtrack for the journey! She is a mom and wife and a grateful alumna of Northwood University. Her former iterations include automotive professional and shoe diva. Sarah serves on the Deacon Team at Willowdale Chapel and is dipping her toe into podcasting!