The forgiveness challenge

For years now it has been my belief, if never fully verbalized, that we don't truly understand forgiveness and grace until two things happen in our lives:

• We are hurt by someone we love deeply, even seemingly unforgivably, and truly forgive them for it
• We hurt someone deeply, even seemingly unforgivably, and receive forgiveness which we know we don't deserve
  

For me, the second was the real eye-opener. Being forgiven by others when it was otherwise impossible to forgive myself taught me what a gift true forgiveness really is. Most of us go through our lives mistaking true forgiveness for cost-benefit analysis. "You've hurt me," or "I've hurt you," and then we mentally go on, "but the overall balance of our relationship remains fairly even," or "the benefit of reconciling is greater than the cost of severing our relationship." Maybe that's largely true in our relationships with others, but it can never be so in our relationship with God. I don't think most of us understand true forgiveness until our need of forgiveness from others has been extensive.

The giving and receiving of forgiveness can get complicated by a few things. In the latter case, there is a difference between someone offering us forgiveness and us receiving it. Many of us never truly receive the love, forgiveness and reconciliation offered us. We often choose isolation over any real acknowledgement of our hurtful actions, which is a prerequisite to our acceptance of forgiveness. This probably could bear some expansion, but this will have to suffice for now.

On the other hand, forgiving someone else doesn't necessarily mean we should put ourselves in harm's way again, especially if they've taken no concrete steps toward fixing whatever it was in themselves that led them to hurt us.

Also, in my experience, at least, forgiveness is a process, not usually an instantaneous event. When I've been deeply hurt by someone, forgiving them doesn't mean I don't feel hurt or angry, at least right away. It does, however, mean that I never stop wanting the best for them. Not in some superficial way, rather I continue to desire for them a deep, abundant life in God. And over time, those feelings of betrayal and anger should diminish if I refuse to feed them by obsessively hanging onto them.

Neither does forgiving another mean they won't have to face the consequences of their actions. In extreme cases, there may be legal actions that really need to be taken; if so, I shouldn't seek to maximize them for the sake of retribution.

Another tough complication can arise when we don't learn about the hurt we've received until it is impossible to express forgiveness. In this case, the only thing we may be able to do is the underlying, heretofore unspoken requirement for receiving and giving forgiveness in other circumstances: we can pray for healing for the other.

I find myself in this boat for the present. I'm angry and hurt. It is literally impossible to reach out in any tangible way to the friend who utterly betrayed me by deeply hurting someone I love. Yet I have been forgiven much, and my desire is for this other to be forgiven, too. So I offer my prayer, asking God to do what I cannot: heal the one who has been wounded, heal me from my pain, heal the one who has hurt us so.