Learning to Forgive

When I was fifteen years old, my sister birthed her first baby boy before she even graduated high school, which coincided with our parents’ divorce, moving to a different town, and a remarriage. Life was inside out and upside down. My grief masqueraded as anger, and I blamed my sister for almost everything that was now wrong in my life. If she hadn’t gotten pregnant, I reasoned, I wouldn’t feel so miserable.

As a new believer, I was pursued by Jesus, even in my anger. Still fuming in my self-righteousness at seventeen years old, I complained to him, I wasn’t the one who got pregnant in high school. He responded in a still, small whisper, But you were no different, Allison. You just didn’t get caught. Stunned into silence, I had no rebuttal. He, of course, was right.

Jesus showed me that I was really the one in need of forgiveness. I needed to repent of my self-righteousness. I needed to cling to his mercy and grace for me and extend it to those whom I perceived had wrecked my life. My need to seek forgiveness far surpassed my need to demand others make their wrongs right for me. I needed to deal with the plank in my own eye before digging the speck out of my sister’s.

Can I be totally transparent? Although God rooted out that bitterness and anger all those years ago, even now, two decades later, certain words or experiences can stir up that decades- old angst. The feelings of anger, helplessness, hopelessness, and being lost slosh around in my heart. Why, Lord? I ask. Why am I feeling these things when you helped walk me down a path of forgiveness over twenty years ago?

Because forgiveness isn’t forgetting. Forgiveness isn’t explaining away someone else’s decisions. Forgiveness isn’t pretending that real consequences don’t exist. Forgiveness is seeking peace in our hearts. As my friend Maghen described it to me, it’s releasing the emotional bind someone has on your heart and leaving the hurt at Jesus’s feet.

Or, as my friend Bobbie so beautifully explains, it’s not unusual or unreasonable to be triggered in the present in a way that reminds of us past hurts and troubles. But we must remember that in forgiving others, we’ve decided that they are no longer accountable to us, no longer required to make restitution to us for any wrong done. In forgiveness, I leave all of that in the hands of God.

It’s hard. And I know many who would protest, But what about ____, filling in the blank with any number of truly terrible things that have harmed them. Still, God calls us to forgive because he first forgave us. And what he calls us to, he will gently lead us in doing.

I hope you won’t skim over that last sentence. Forgiveness is not solely up to you and whatever effort you can muster up. With just the smallest seed of trust, God can cultivate full-blown forgiveness in our hearts.

If forgiveness feels impossible to you, maybe you could start by honestly answering these five questions.

1. Have I started with a simple conversation with God about how I feel? (Phil. 4:6-7)
2. Am I willing to let God lead me down this difficult path of forgiveness? (Prov. 16:9)
3. Have I asked God to show me my shortcomings? (Matt. 7:3–5) Have I listened receptively to what he tells me? (Prov. 2:1–5)
4. Have I done the hard work needed to process the feelings brought on by the situation I’m facing? (Ps. 18:6)
5. Do I have a right view of how much grace has been shown to me? (John 1:16)

If you answered “no” to any of these questions, I’d like to offer you a practical tool that may help. Two years ago, I began training as a journal facilitator, which means I help people use journaling for soul care, emotional well-being, clarity of thought, and stress management (among other things). While there are dozens of journaling strategies you could use, I have a particular one in mind. My mentor, Kay Adams, founder of the Center for Journal Therapy, taught me about lists of 100. As the name implies, you make a list of 100 things centered on a particular question or topic. So, for example, I could make a list of 100 ways that forgiveness could actually help me. If this is something you’d like to try, all you need is a paper numbered to 100, a pen, and around 20–30 minutes to write. You want to write as quickly as possible, and repetition is okay! This tool is a practical way to walk out Romans 12:2: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (NIV).

If we truly understand the power of forgiveness to help us, then we’re more likely to ask God to lead us down a path towards forgiveness. Is anything more beautiful and worthy of our God than “be[ing] kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Eph. 4:32 ESV)?

Allison Byxbe is a writer, Ann Voskamp intern, editor, and journaling instructor from South Carolina. A lover of the beach, the stars, and the lattes her husband makes, her favorite things to write about are motherhood, special needs parenting, mental health, grief, and faith. You can connect with her over at Writing Is Cheaper Than Therapy, Facebook, and Instagram.

Photograph © Sixteen Miles Out, used with permission