It's Time
prompted by my own personal aversion to what I've heard called "the forgiveness industry" ...
that industry within the church that tells believers that if they want their prayers heard, or if they want to be healed or made whole or made emotionally well, they must forgive...
that sort of forgiveness that is born of duty and expectation and shame and fear...
the kind of forgiveness that I've become convinced is not real forgiveness at all...
I'm not talking here about forgiveness over what I'll call "every day sin". There are sins that offend our ego and those we are called to forgive by choice and will.
No, I'm talking about sins that wound our hearts, that go to the core of our soul and cause serious damage. I'm talking about sins born of evil, and don't just offend our ego, but are intended to kill us on the inside...things like rape, violence, molestation, murder, abuse.
To be clear, sin is sin, but some sin is vastly more harming then other sin and that's the sin I'm talking about. The kind of sin that harms in such ways as to result in complex trauma and post traumatic stress disorders in the one who is harmed.
The sin that harmed me was repeated sexual abuse, violence and cruel words. It depersonalized me, detached me, and rendered me emotionally incapacitated for many, many, years. The best way to describe what I felt all those years was...blank...nothing...dead...numb. I married, and felt nothing. I bore children and felt nothing. I held my babies and felt nothing. I saw sad things and felt nothing. I saw happy things and felt nothing.
Feeling nothing and knowing that you ought to be feeling something, anything, is like living trapped inside a body you can't move. When my son was born, they froze me from the chest down, and as the affect wore off, I remember trying to feel and move my legs and couldn't; the frustration and sense of helplessness over not being able to move was overwhelming, even while knowing that eventually the freezing would wear off. I never had the hope of knowing that my emotional freezing would eventually thaw, and that some day I'd stop feeling blank.
I'd received Jesus as my Savior when I was 13. One of the first teachings I heard was the requirement to forgive or God would not forgive me. So I did.
My family were Christians, and I met and married my husband in the church. It was during our first fights that I was first reminded of my requirement to forgive. So I did.
Being a good, forgiving Christian was hard; I never was good enough, so I quit trying and started to live life on my own terms. I threw myself into a career, alcohol, and forgiveness simply became a non-issue.
Years later, when I returned to Christ after living blank, numb and prodigal for most of my adult life, I started attending church again, began a spiritual healing recovery, and told myself that this time I would get this forgiveness thing down pat. But I didn't.
The blankness remained.
The irony is that my "raging days" did not begin to happen until after I returned to the Lord, and made the decision to forgive (again). Up until then, the only feeling that had ever emerged out of the numbing blankness was anger, but after returning from being prodigal, this anger took on a whole new dimension, becoming rage. And while I hated being angry and raging, particularly towards those I knew I was hurting and harming, at least I felt alive. And I'd made a connection - the anger and the rage seemed to flow out of my struggles to forgive. It usually went like this - something would happen, I'd feel triggered, anger would begin to swell and spiral out of control along with my thoughts, which would turn to my past. Then I'd get even more angry, and at this point, would usually become rage, taking aim at several targets. I'd experience anger at the thing that triggered me and anger at the person who triggered me, anger at the past, anger at the offender in my past, anger at myself for not being able to forgive, and anger at God for being so silent through it all. After my anger let out it's full force, I would then feel shame; shame over my reaction to the thing that triggered, shame over my treatment of the person who triggered me, shame over my past, shame over being such a bad Christian who couldn't forgive and shame over my ranting at God.
Spirals are very hard to get out of.
You can't get out of a spiral in one leap.
Slowly, surely, though, even in the midst of all this, I began to heal. God used His word, emotional healing 12 step, and a revelation of His love for me as Father to gradually bring me into authentic healing. Just as slowly, and almost imperceptibly, one emotion after another came back. I began to feel, and that meant, I began to feel the pain over what had happened to me.
It sounds trite, but it's true - God cannot heal what we do not feel. If you want to heal from trauma, you have to let the pain come. The trouble was, every time I let the pain in, I risked the spiral into bitterness and un-forgiveness all again, particularly since by this time, one of the people who had hurt me the most was still in my life. And each time I struggled with bitterness and un-forgiveness, I found myself moving towards numbness again. So, I decided to put the requirement to forgive on a shelf, and turned my attention to allowing God His way of healing in me. I quit trying to forgive, I quit beating myself up about not wanting to forgive and just told God I couldn't do it, but was willing to be made willing that He do it in me.
Over time...and isn't this how most things with God are, over time?
Over time healing took hold in me, and one day, I found myself truly willing and wanting to walk in forgiveness, but not because it would free me - God already had done that - but because it would free them. Forgiveness, the kind that is motivated by love for the other and a desire to see the other set free, just sort of snuck up on me. It was just there and has been there ever since. Even when the person who hurt me as a child continues to do and say things that hurt today, nothing in me gets triggered and I'm free to walk out forgiveness towards her. I feel the pain of it, but the forgiveness enables...no, empowers me to let her go with a trust that God will have His way in her.
Our relationship has been transformed because of forgiveness...not restored, but transformed.
Restoration occurs when forgiveness flows out of the head, and is for therapeutic purpose; when forgiveness is about making oneself feel better. When you think about it, a restored thing is just the same old thing, only cleaned up a bit.
Transformation occurs when forgiveness flows out of the heart and is for loves purpose; when forgiveness is about releasing the other into God's hands. When you think about it, a transformed thing is something altogether different, usually more valuable and far more useful.
I'm not saying this is the way of it for everyone who struggles through traumatization and is told that once they've forgiven, the trauma will be healed. But I am suggesting that, if anything, it's the other way around, and I believe that true, authentic forgiveness only happens in the midst of true, authentic healing.
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