The Road to Forgiveness

Forgiveness.

Oh that word. A word of such weight.

It is a heavy word, one that is so completely life-giving and yet at times has felt like it’s going to bury me.

From a close friendship that turned very painful, to hurts purposely inflicted from a co-worker, I am no stranger to relationship pain and the process of forgiving. When I say forgiving, I mean  the release of bitterness, the surrender to God to do what He wills, and the moving on of our hearts. I’m talking about healing. I am not talking about sweeping things under the rug. Or allowing those individuals to continue to hurt you. Forgiveness has everything to do with the condition of our hearts and is not about our offenders accepting that offered forgiveness. I have spent years learning to walk in forgiveness, offering it over and over again as my heart wrestled with the tendency to pick  the hurts back up. We often treat forgiveness as a one-time act, which is  partially accurate. As followers of Christ we do have to make the decision to forgive even when we don’t feel forgiveness towards those that have hurt us. But I have found we sometimes don’t talk about the process; the road of forgiveness. A road that, depending on the depth of the hurt inflicted, can be littered with potholes and reminders of pain.

I’ve also walked the road of forgiving someone that didn’t apologize. Someone who claimed no responsibility for the scars that they had intentionally given my soul. Someone who abused me. Have you been there? When no apology comes, the road to forgiving  can feel impossible. That road seems to lead into a stormy ocean of pain with no way across. It was there standing at the edge of those dark waters that I found I needed a God who parts seas.

My Beloved stood with me in front of those waves. He spoke tenderly, telling me about the healing waiting for me on the opposite shore.

He taught me that in order to truly forgive I had to give up my right, to be right.

I wrestled with that one. I would internally argue that I was right, that justice was not prevailing in this situation. “Father, do you see what they have done? ”

But I ask you to lay that right down and follow me, He whispered.

Lay down your understanding.

Lay down your defense.

Follow me. My example. And watch Me provide the forgiveness you need.

The key to supernatural forgiveness is that I cannot offer it in my own power. I do not possess it. I could not cross the violent waves in front of me by swimming. And let me tell you, I tried. I’ve tried to manufacture forgiveness. To pray that God would give me the strength to swim across the ocean. It didn’t work. Not really. Deep in the crevices of my heart, the crude of unforgiveness was impossible to remove. And the waves of my pain and hurts continued to crash over me. Drowning me. Defeated, I would crawl back to the edge and sit there drenched in my broken mess.

But God had this forgiveness. He had a way through the waves of pain.  He gives it to us freely so we can then give it to others.

I watched in awe as He, in His power, parted the violent waves, the dark waters of all my pain and led me through. As I left my right to be right on that beach, I was able to walk through my ocean of hurt on dry land. He never fails to overwhelm me with His provision. He always provides for me. For you, too, friend.

What He taught me is that I have to recognize that I may not have done the things that my abuser did…but I’m just as guilty of other offenses. That’s a tough one. It never feels like that could be true. But that’s because I have such a skewed vision of truth sometimes. I forget that my pride is just as nasty to God. My thoughts are just as unruly, unrepentant, and hurtful. I am guilty. My sin, in whatever form, required Jesus to die for me. I need forgiveness and I need it bad. God’s sweet forgiveness of my brokenness is what allows me to walk on dry ground to forgiving others.

When I allow God’s forgiveness to pour into my dry heart, when it saturates every crack and crevice, the unforgiveness that was stuck in there becomes dislodged and dissolves. I hold His hand as we walk forward free and unencumbered, overflowing with forgiveness.

-Kallie