The Art of Forgiveness

We’ve all been there. No one enjoys it. It sucks and there’s no hiding that. We’ve been hurt and feel betrayed, unsafe, or used. The only thing we can scramble to hold on to is this declaration: “I won’t ever forgive you”. We proclaim this to spite the other person who has wounded us deeply. Our way to compensate for our utter lack of control over the situation that happened to us is to claim this right: I don’t have to forgive.

You’re right. You don’t have to forgive, just like you don’t have to love. But can you imagine a life without loving? The same is true of a life without forgiveness: it is empty, dark, and devoid of happiness.  Whether we realize it or not, by remaining in unforgiveness, we are drinking our own poison.

The person who hurt you is not being affected by this unmoved stance of yours; you are. You are the one staying up late passing these memories over in your heart, plotting how to give the next evil stare, or how the silent treatment will make clear all the things you hold back from speaking. They’re your hairs that are becoming white and your stress levels that are sky-rocketing.

But, what if you were to do something incredible, completely unforeseen, and yet entirely possible? What if you were to forgive? What if you were to release that person from their bondage to you? What if you were to accept that from that point forward, they owe you nothing? Maybe you’re saying that’s impossible; there’s too much hurt and too many memories to be able to do this.

Look at the Cross. Look at Jesus. We were released from our bondage, from the burden that all humanity carried. We owed so much and yet were acquitted and made completely free. We owe nothing. Our debt was transferred and completely taken care of. “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable,” says C.S. Lewis, “because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.” 

Have we accepted God’s forgiveness of all our past sins?—that His mercy covers us from “the top of my head to the tip of my toes”? There is nothing He cannot forgive; only that which we refuse to bring to His mercy. Jesus told the polish nun, St. Faustina, the greatest sin is like a drop of water in the furnace of His mercy---it is consumed, evaporated, only to exist as a memory in our mind, but not in His.

I say that forgiveness is an art because like any art, it takes time, patience, and practice to get it right. But if we don’t start somewhere, we’ll never learn to turn those insecure brush strokes into an amazing work of art. We’ll never move from playing isolated chords to provoking souls to soar through intricate strumming and musings on the guitar. Forgiveness takes time, patience, and practice.

Some of the things we have gone through are still too painful to mention out loud or to speak of outside of a select group of friends. Maybe you yourself have been the cause of an exorbitant amount of pain to others. I have as well. Either way, we are called to learn the art of forgiveness: both the act of forgiving and that of receiving the forgiveness.

The more we receive the forgiveness of our Heavenly Father, the more we will learn this great, divine art of releasing those who are in bondage. “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy”. And I would add, blessed are those who receive mercy, for they will be merciful.

Grace and Mercy will follow me all the days of my life.

photo credit: Ysamar Jimenez