A Secluded Sacrifice

“Do you forgive me?”

“I can’t.”

“I said I was sorry.  I’ve done everything I could to make it right.  What else can I do?”

“You could go back in time and make better choices.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.  I was young and foolish.”

“‘I didn’t mean to’ and ‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t make it better.  It doesn’t change the past.”

“So you’re going to hold this against me for the rest of our lives?”

“I don’t know.  I don’t know how to move on.”

“I can’t change the past.  I lived in ignorance, not knowing that what I did was hurting you.  I can change moving forward.  But I need your forgiveness.”

“What you did changed me.  You broke trust.  How do you fix broken trust?  Is it even fixable?”

“I’ve heard that time heals all wounds.  Maybe you just need time.”

“Time does not heal all wounds.  There are wounds that get worse with time, like broken trust.  Broken trust is like a shattering, not a clean break, so it feels like there are too many little shards everywhere to ever piece back together.”

“You’re not a very forgiving person.  Have you ever been forgiven?”

“I’m not a forgiving person?!  Funny how you flip the tables on me and put me in the wrong.  I’m not the one who broke this relationship, but suddenly I’m required to forgive so we can be reconciled?!  How is that fair?”

“Didn’t you ever learn that life isn’t fair?  I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have said that.  I forget that I put you in this situation to begin with.  I just know that I would forgive you if the tables were turned.”

“Stop with theoretical situations.  The tables aren’t turned.  I’m sitting on this side, and you’re on that side.  It’s what we’re working with.  Forgiving you feels like saying that what you did was ok.  It wasn’t ok.”

“Forgiving me means you don’t hold it over my head anymore.”

“But I don’t know how to live without holding it against you.”

“And we’re back to where we started.”

“What is forgiveness anyways?”

“Forgiving means letting it go and giving me a clean slate.  Can we start over?”

“How far does forgiveness go?  Are there things that are unforgivable?  I think this might be one of them.”

“I’m sorry, I have to interrupt.  I overheard you two talking about forgiveness.  May I interject?  I have some experience on the topic.”

“It depends what side you’re on.”

“Oh come on, there aren't any sides here.  We are on the same side.  The sides are forgiveness or unforgiveness.  Freedom or bitterness.”

“Again, easy for you to say.”

“Forgiveness isn’t saying it’s ok.  Forgiveness isn’t trusting again.  Forgiveness isn’t reconciliation.  It is not forgetting and acting like it never happened.  It isn’t easy.  It is not for the faint of heart.”

“Then what the hell is it?!”

“What if there were someone who could carry all of that pain for you?  Would you be able to forgive if someone else carried the burden?”

“I don’t know.  I’m afraid of who I would be if I let it go.  It feels like such a part of me, all the pain I mean.  I feel like I would be a doormat if I let it go, and a coward if I let someone else carry it.  I still don’t get it.  How can forgiveness apply to the most heinous, awful things, like cold blooded murder, and also apply to accidentally bumping into someone at the grocery store, or spilling someone’s drink?  ‘I’m sorry’ means something a lot different to someone whose family was killed by a drunk driver and someone whose friend forgot to text them on their birthday.”

“You speak correctly.  There are levels of forgiveness.  There are some things that are easier or harder to forgive, based on personality, life experience, and the depth of damage.  Offenses that create a trainwreck are obviously more work to forgive than accidentally stepping on someone’s shoe or the child who impulsively sneaks cookies from the cookie jar.  Offenses that affect the person at a soul level often take a lifetime to forgive, while unintentional rash mistakes are forgiven and forgotten in the moment.”

“So when I am asked if I forgive, can I say I am working on it?”

“You must first make the choice to forgive, and then you will embark on a long journey of working on it.  I’ll go with you.”

“And what will be the benefit to me?  I know the benefit to the other person, but what if they don’t deserve it?”

“Yes, we are self centered as people, aren’t we?  The benefit will be more for you than the other person.”

“Again, I don’t get it.  It seems to me that the benefit is solely for the offender, the person who doesn’t deserve it, than for me, the one who was hurt.”

“Let’s look from another angle.  Look at forgiveness not as pretending this never happened, not as giving a get out of jail free card, but as giving good will to the offender and not letting their problems transfer onto you.  In other words, think of the offense as a disease.  By not forgiving, you are carrying around that disease.  It slowly becomes part of your identity.  Forgiving it is throwing it and all of its symptoms away from you.  Again, your choice is to carry the disease or throw it off.  You are the one in power, the one with the choice.”

“So what you’re saying is, if I make the choice to forgive, I’ll be free?”

“You speak the truth.”

“I have another question.  There is the actual offense, and then there are the little tiny ways it affects me throughout my days, my life.  It affects my trust structure, my attachments, my viewpoints…”

“That’s why I said it’s a lifelong process.  But I’ll make you another promise.  As you work through forgiving, you’ll be better for everyone around you.  Everyone you love will benefit.”

“I still don’t understand.  There is a big debt owed to me.”

“Another angle.  There are unending angles to forgiveness.  You are correct.  There is a debt owed to you.  How much would you say it is, in monetary value?  A million dollars?  Ten million?”

“It’s too much to put into monetary value.”

“Yes.  You are cancelling that debt that is in fact owed to you.  That’s why I said this isn’t for the faint of heart.”

“Why would I cancel a debt owed to me?”

“If you owed a debt that you could not pay, would you want your creditor to forgive the debt?”

“I don’t like that question.  I try my best to not owe anyone anything so that I don’t have a creditor.”

“We can’t all be so fortunate as to not owe anything.  Put yourself in the debtor position.  Picture it for a moment.  What if you deeply hurt the person you loved the most in the entire world.  Would you want the debt to be forgiven?”

“Yes.”

“This isn’t easy.  There is suffering in forgiveness.”

“Who made you the expert on forgiveness, and why should I believe what you’re saying?”

“Like I said earlier, I have some experience on the topic.  I have forgiven much, and know firsthand the freedom that comes.  Some of my relationships have been reconciled through forgiveness, and some haven’t.  Reconciliation depends on both parties.  It takes both parties to be reconciled.  The offender must change and show true repentance, or reconciliation isn’t possible.  But the person who forgives…that person will be free.  I am free.  And the relationships that have been reconciled?  They truly are better than before.  They have depth that can’t be stolen.”

“It seems counter-intuitive to me that by suffering and choosing to cancel a debt, I will be free.”

“Yes, that’s the backwards-ness of forgiveness.  It is the hardest thing you’ll ever do, but we all know that the greater the challenge, the more the reward.  You, the one who forgives, will be able to walk through all of your days without carrying that heavy baggage.  You see, no one gets through their experience on this earth without being hurt in some capacity.  We can carry all of those wounds and scars around and become weighed down and bitter, or we can continue setting people free, which in reality frees us.”

“I know a few people who have forgiven atrocities, and I don’t understand them.”

“The happiest people I know are the most forgiving.  They aren’t carrying other people’s troubles and disgraces around in their souls.  They’ve also forgiven themselves.  They aren’t carrying their own mistakes around.  They have accepted their own flaws. ”

“You’ve been quiet for a while.  What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking how deeply regretful I am that I’ve put you in this position, and wondering again, the same question I started with.  Do you forgive me? Or, let me put it this way-can you forgive me?”