Being in the Lent period let’s talk spiritual shit. The hardest person to forgive has been myself. The solution I have found is that next time do the right thing. Then it’s no longer a mistake but a learning experience. Usually this level of introspection happens after someone has died. It takes alot for a human being to be remorseful. How many people have you told that you were sorry. I will admit very few. Too few to count on one hand and a few are dead and I only felt remorseful after they died.
I still think of myself as one of the few in the upper percentile of people who try to do right by people. I’m no angel but I try to be a decent human being. Matter of fact if say there were a vote for Ms. Congeniality I’d get the cake and in every function I get to pray or read the Bible so I guess family, colleagues and friends see me as a righteous woman. It’s not very modest but why else would they keep picking me.
Now, I still need to forgive one or two people but I don’t think that they have changed if anything they have gotten worse. Of course I avoid them like the plague but sometimes I can’t and I’m like does God forgive us if we are not remorseful? K. He may forgive us but does He store the cordial relationship if you are not sorry and you are certain not changing for the better? Asking for myself.
Before someone I loved who I sure needed forgiveness from last spoke to me, it was like two hours. Never once did he say I’ve forgiven you for all the wrongs might have done to me. So why was I guilty. It didn’t bother him anymore but it bothered me. He had nothing to forgive me for but I had something to forgive myself for. I sinned against myself more by sinning against him. It was I who was holding myself to a higher standard. Not him, yet the offense was against him.
I am yet to understand why shit that bothers me does not bother other people. There’s things I can’t do because it is I who will suffer. Say if I steal from you and you never found out. I stole from you but I need to forgive myself, I need my forgiveness more than I need yours. Even if you forgive me it means nothing until my conscience stops bothering me.
When I forgive someone I am giving up the moral right to retaliate. Holding a grudge is a form of retribution, forgiveness implies that you condone the wrong doing in a twisted kind of way our psyche works because thoughts have power when you are around people who have good thoughts about you, it’s therapeutic. Sometimes this can happen even when they are far away.
But think of it this way someone owes you money and they will never pay it back. You can stay angry but fact remains that you are never getting back your money. What a conundrum. You have a right to be angry infact it feels empowering but honey you ain’t never getting your money back. Periodt. You are suffering over something that is over, done and dusted. Honey not even God can change the past. So be careful what past you creating too.
I always have this paradigm of hell. Those who believe in being worm food, move it along. So first off it’s a place with no God. Just Satan, you and yalls homies. All the bad stuff.
Then I think of it as prison, as old age, as being incapacitated in an island alone. With all the time to think about every minutae of your life. The good memories, the bad and the ugly. EVERYTHING. In excruciating detail. I don’t want to think and rethink a million times how I took advantage of someone and what happened to them and what kind of a person was I when that was a good thing to do. It’s absolutely horrendous especially if it never ends.
I love true crime so I listen to inmates alot. Especially those who have been in the can, slang for solitary confinement. Prison really is a kind of hell. It’s crowded it’s got the worst social misfits.
I hear forgiveness is something you do for yourself but is forgiveness something God does for Himself or for you? From my experience with forgiveness I’d say forgiveness is too hard a thing to do just for yourself. When I feel forgiven by God I always think that He forgave me to prove to me that He believes that I can do better and I am a better or bigger person than what I did wrong. The first time I got that epiphany I really bawled my eyes out. All I could think was surely God you can’t expect this of me.
I have a capacity to make honest mistakes, to do cruel things when I am in a bad place, not carrying through an iota of my good intentions, I feel pain, anger and sadness and it takes a lot of time to process and release. Of course I don’t extend the same grace to those who offend me.
A hard fact to face is that it’s really easy to forgive people who you don’t love but when you love ‘em, boy are you in for it. You love’ em, they’ve betrayed you, you can’t hate them, all you feel is enraged love. Inseparable and does it smoulder until the embers erupt or die out. Love exists no matter what. You loved them in the first place out of acceptance and selflessness. Nothing can rob you of that goodness and purity that was the source of the love you felt
Sometimes the people we have the toughest time forgiving have become an embodiment of something else that is tormenting you. Inside you. Instead of the abstract fears and raging cold places lurking in the shadows of your psyche, now you have a real flesh and blood human being to project all of that unbearable difficult emotions on.
So then it’s really not about forgiveness. It’s about making peace with your past, making peace with your identity, making peace with your thoughts and experiences of the propensity for darkness in us humans, to make peace with your existential despair. That can take your entire life.
If you can’t forgive, you can accept and take steps to protect yourself in future. They did this they’re like this, THAT IS NOT GOING TO CHANGE. Women especially myself included have a hard time believing people when they show them who they are the first time. If giving the benefit of the doubt was a person it would be a woman for sure. I think it’s something we are just cursed with sometimes.
Women need to be outraged and angry and not shamed for it by being called bitter and broken or hurt. If someone hurts you why is it that you are the villain rather than the victim? I guess if a man was mugged and his hand chopped off and he was angry and depressed, we should tell him to stop being bitter and move on shit happens. His fear, anger and sadness are valid and act as a protection and as way to process the trauma and loss. In the end stronger and better boundaries and healing eventually replace the angst and helplessness.
