Very early in my faith journey, while we were still living in Biloxi, I encountered the idea that the biggest obstacle to our receiving God's blessings and transformation in our lives is unforgiveness. How can we heal from a hurt to which we insist on clinging? It's like continually scraping off a scab before the underlying skin and tissue have had a chance to heal.
My first encounter with this, in early 1985, was my realization that I needed to forgive my alcoholic (and adoptive) father for not being the dad I needed. He'd never been able to accept me for who I was, and I'd figured out that I was deeply scarred by that. He'd been dead for a decade by then, so it wasn't as if I could approach him to offer forgiveness and seek reconciliation, yet I still needed to experience the process for myself. I remember lying in bed each night, recognizing that I needed to forgive him and that I didn't know how, asking God to do what I could not. Before long I realized that the way he treated me and his alcoholism and suicide were all commonly rooted in his own deep brokenness. I found myself praying for healing for his soul, that he would somehow, by God's grace, enter into the eternity that he rejected while he was alive. Soon, I found myself understanding him far better than I ever had before and sincerely wanting the best for him, and the peacefulness that brought to my own soul was tangible.
So there, in a nutshell, was the reiterative process of forgiveness where no other person could participate. Shouldn't I expect to need a similar process to completely forgive myself?
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